


I Have Loved the Stars Too Fondly to be Fearful of the Night

by Anonymississippi



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alcohol, Breathplay, Drugs, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Kryptonite cuffs, Lap Dances, Pre-Season 1, and feelings, pole dances, stripper!fic, striptease, with plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 00:09:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8944840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: After weeks of reconnaissance, Alex and the rest of the DEO agents are finally ready to make their move against the aliens of Rozz. There's only one problem: the hostiles are in the midst of negotiations with the Circuit, an international arms smuggling ring whose members prefer to shoot before they talk. While the Circuit schmoozes the unidentified Rozz leaders, Vasquez, Lucy, and Alex make attempts at infiltrating the negotiations. But those negotiations are being celebrated at Club Jaguar, the hottest gentleman's club in National City. Alex's night is overrun with shot glasses, stripteases and lap dances, and an interlude with a Kryptonian General that she never could've expected.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rtarara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rtarara/gifts).



> *This fic takes place prior to season one. The only thing that wouldn't align with canon is that Lucy is already an agent at the DEO, mainly because I wanted Vasquez and Lucy (my season one faves) to get some love, too!* 
> 
> Secret Santa prompt gone out of control: 
> 
> Alex is investigating reports of a local gang forcibly recruiting aliens. They find a way into one of the events for the gang in question (which has ties to a lot of prominent business people)—but as a stripper. At the event she hits it off and winds up giving a LOT of extra attention to Astra. Later they meet up again. (I'm trying to leave it vague so it can be altered/played with easily :D )
> 
> Of course I just needed the right prompt to write thousands of words of General Danvers sin...so, I stalked rtarara's blog to better know what to write and found this gem, which I used for sinspiration: 
> 
> http://rtarara.tumblr.com/post/149015667727/disasterdanvers-general-danvers-au-eliza-danvers

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Working on the two dirty martinis, then I’m on service for the VIP section. Is it mustache on the left?”

Alex pivots in her heels on the platform elevated between the partitions of two private booths, glancing toward the exclusive area beneath the winding, cherry wood staircase at the back of the showroom. The men, the humanoids, the shapeshifters, and the singular woman who constitute tonight’s VIPs keep their heads ducked low, their conversation drowned out by techno music. It’s an early night at club Jaguar, eight or nine p.m., and the group in question have recently sauntered in after what Alex imagines has been a trying bout of negotiations. All are clad in disheveled states of business casual, but none of the higher-ups seem to be paying any attention to the stage, to the girls, or to the drinks.

Not for the moment, anyway.

They just got here.

Lucy hovers over the main stage, holding herself parallel to the floor with straining muscles. She's wrapped up in two durable, satiny curtains of material unfurled from the ceiling. Vasquez is loading up the whiskey drinks onto a tray to take back to VIP, and Hank is probably biting his nails in the van parked out back, ready to send in a team should even the slightest snafu occur while the three of them maintain the charade.

“No, not mustache,” Alex mumbles, twisting around the pole in the center of her raised dance space. She taps discreetly at the flesh-colored com lodged in her ear canal. “It’s the woman… all those men, they’re easily distracted. White streak, she’s keeping them focused.”

“Doesn’t make her the boss,” Lucy grumbles from her inverted position on the stage. “Just sober. And significantly less horny than all the other negotiators.”

“It’s her,” Alex murmurs under her breath.

“How do you know?” Vasquez asks, strutting around the corner, tray filled to brimming with drinks: two whole liters of vodka positioned in the center, surrounded by high balls and snifters and coupette glassware. The towering bottles of liquor would teeter and topple in anyone else’s hands, but Vasquez remains steady as she transports the tray in fishnets and electric blue stilettos.

That was their “in” for the meeting: weeks of research at the DEO, and their strike team had finally deduced that the mercenaries who usually dealt in ammo and Uzis were now in the aliens-for-hire business. And that business deal was going down tonight, amid some of humanity’s most extravagant vices.

Most of the off-world creatures Alex has encountered in the field are able to withstand even the most advanced human fire-power. So, adding aliens to the illegal arms business will likely turn the market on its bloodied ear. The DEO had tracked the alien attacks worldwide, and knew that this deal between Fort Rozz and the Circuit—the international arms smuggling gang—was make-or-break. The Circuit had finally gotten in touch with some of the Fort Rozz hostiles, and tonight was a show of good faith, the Circuit rolling out the proverbial red carpet for their lethal alien allies.

Cue the reservations at club Jaguar, National City’s swankiest gentleman’s club.

With lush leather seats, hazy neon lighting, private booths, top-shelf liquors, and enough women to stage three separate Ziegfeld Follies’ productions, the Jaguar was not some run-of-the-mill stripping buffet for frat dudes and the occasional bachelor party. This place has seen royalty, has seen ambassadors, politicians, millionaires, and real-estate moguls. Escorts-turned-reality-stars had gotten their start here. Three former Miss Californias. One Senator. Most of the dancers are classically trained and several possess college degrees; they are above average, and Alex gets the feeling that she’s seeing the type of woman—escort—dancer, that might cater to international diplomats.

Alex bends and swoops around the pole at center, gracing the trio of younger men sporting perfectly shaded five-o’clock shadows with a wink and a smile. She at least has to pretend to work here, even if her attention sails back across the showroom to where the velvet ropes dip and curve, parabolas of exclusivity. Behind the bouncers sits a dozen of the most dangerous beings on the planet, and Alex wants nothing more than to infiltrate their group. The closer she gets to the Circuit, the closer she is to the renegade hostiles, and the closer the DEO gets to Rozz.

The safer National City will be.

The safer _Kara_ will be.

And, judging by the pointed fingers and near-full glasses, the dipped heads and lack of women providing lap dances, Alex thinks they haven’t gotten to the ‘enjoyment’ portion of the evening yet.

Alex plans on changing that.

The woman Alex makes for the boss taps one of the strippers on the shoulder and motions for her to leave the booth, cutting her head abruptly to the side. The man on the receiving end of the attention pouts, objects, but the command is final. Cash changes hands and the girl struts off as the man combs his mussed hair over and turns back to the woman with the white steak at her temple. She wears a pair of square-framed glasses, but she is not mousy in the slightest; poised, classic, with cheek bones sharper than shattered glass.

Alex spins again in time with the music, leans against the pole, then slides down to get a better look at the VIP section.

_Her._

Definitely someone important. Definitely someone in charge.

“Gut feeling,” Alex answers Vasquez, unhooking the purple velvet rope that serves as partition between her platform and clients, or, clients for the women who actually work here. Not the undercover ones like her, like Lucy and Vasquez—and not just undercover agents for VICE, investigators doing their best to keep the exotic dancing industry distinct from the sex workers.

The DEO’s undercover investigation into the individual alien mercenaries had led them to the Circuit and their international contracts: militant groups in Aleppo, orders processed through Kiev, Neo Nazis in Chicago, and shipments docked in Cartegena. Maritt, a Finnish businessman with cronies on every continent, is hosting this little shin-dig. His fellow Circuit members casually slice throats and break fingers while he vacations in National City.

Alex zeroes in on the elder Maritt, a gentleman with grizzled salt-and-pepper hair, a slim trunk, and hawkish nose; he extends his hands along the back of the couch as Vasquez dips down, arching her back and twisting around while she passes out drinks. He keeps fidgeting, bouncing his legs, sniffling, running a hand against the underside of his nose, reaching out to grasp at the back of the one woman in the group. Even in the lowlight of the club, Alex can see the glassy sheen of his eyes, the agitated haze and white residue indicative of a man who hasn’t cleaned up properly after doing a line in the bathroom or the limo, or maybe even at the table in front of him.

Not that the staff of Jaguar would care. It’s the kind of place that doesn’t ask questions.

Alex won’t go for him first: he’s antsy enough to spill everything, and horny enough to hit on the brunette with the white streak when there are dozens of girls surrounding him. They’re all dressed in next-to-nothing compared to the businesswoman’s pressed white blouse, the navy pencil skirt, the pantyhose, the glasses, the heels, the carefully twisted chignon at the base of her neck. The surrounding men have popped the buttons at the tops of their shirts, loosened their ties, and are working on their first or second drinks (perhaps their first hits if Maritt secured enough cocaine as ‘gifts’ for his guests). The woman in charge looks immensely agitated, annoyed that she has to continue her (illegal) meeting beyond a board room.

Alex slinks up the stairs to the private booth and reminds herself that any one of these people could be an alien in disguise, with stingers and venom and strength unmatched by human physicality. She’s here, first and foremost, for information. It’s her job to nudge humans or aliens in the right direction with some harmless questioning, a little bit of personal inquiry from a dancer just trying to get by.

“Evening gentlemen,” Alex coos, bumping hips with Vasquez as she exits, squeezing her hand and noting that no signal has yet been given. The strike teams out back won’t go through with the raid tonight until they’ve squeezed every ounce of available information from this group. Dates, times, supplies, vendors. A lot of it rests on whisky-loose lips, and Alex, Lucy, and Vasquez putting on a believable show.

“Hey handsome,” Alex turns, zeroing in on Maritt and what looks to be his number two, a wide-eyed, skittish boy who can’t be twenty-five yet.

“Want a dance?”

“What kind of dancing?” one drunken man asks from the corner, his suit jacket rumpled in a pile at his side, carbonation from a clear club soda drink clinging to his mustachioed lip.

“The dirty kind,” Alex struts over, snapping the strap of her g-string against her hips.

She hears the men go for their pockets, wallets full of smaller bills materializing as she makes the rounds. “You boys been doing big deals all day and now, you’re ready for some action. Is that right?” Alex purrs, turning her back and then lowering herself onto the man’s lap. His hands go for her hips in an instant, and she starts grinding against the growing bulge beneath his slacks.

“I bet you all deserve some special attention,” Alex begins, jostling her ass as she feels the man’s fingers pinching the flesh north of her hipbone, sliding a bill beneath the strap. “Stock brokers, real estate, corporate banking, but I’ve never seen a group like yours,” she teases.

Coy. Sly. An obvious ploy, but those who want praise will find it, regardless of sincerity.

“To big deals!” one sloshed humanoid in a bow tie cries, standing with a whisky shot in hand, downing it, his quills expanding out of the back of his shirt.

_Quills… that’s a Bardorian._

Alex feigns disinterest, instead continuing to grind and dance atop the lap of the man beneath her. If the alcohol keeps flowing, maybe the dances will slack off. There’s only so much ego-stroking (and other stroking) she can stomach on this kind of job.

“The deal isn’t done,” the woman shouts at Maritt, who waves her off.

She sulks in her spot, one hand propped against her forehead. Two men beside her swivel their heads round to the front stage when Lucy finally completes her aerial maneuvers and slides into the splits on the stage, rotates, leaving her legs open spread-eagle for the front row spectators. Cash swirls like a whirlpool at the end of Lucy’s number, which means Alex only has fifteen minutes to get prepped for her own show. She needs to gather some intel, but that won’t come if she’s not focusing on the big boss.

Alex changes tactics.

“You don’t sound too happy about that,” Alex yells over the music, attention redirected toward the woman.

Lethal Business Lady ticks a brow skyward as Alex plants her feet, straightens her legs and dips to the ground. Arching her back, Alex flings her hair overhead in time with the thumping bass. She licks her lips, then smirks at the groan and possessive pawing from the man beneath her.

“I could make you happy, just like big boy behind me,” Alex suggests, pulling her arm up above her to clutch at the back of the man’s shaven, dark-skinned head. She secures her grip and drags the man’s face into her neck. He kisses and licks at her while she sways in the dark against gravity and her own personal ethics.

_Do it for the job_ , Alex repeats her mantra of the evening, the chant that makes her feel like an agent, not a whore, an _agent_ , not a whore.

The woman with the white streak rolls her eyes. Shakes her head. Replies with a word that Alex doesn’t hear, but her lips seem to form the two dismissive syllables for _doubtful_.

“No, really!” Alex presses, feeling ridiculous for shouting over the songs. “I’m not just fun for the boys,” Alex places the man’s hand that isn’t digging into her waist over her breast, prompting him to squeeze at will.

_Agent, not a whore. Agent, not a whore._

She wants to vomit, and then shower, and then vomit immediately after, and possibly shatter someone’s tibia.

“You know,” Alex lowers her voice and crawls forward a bit on her hands. This section of the VIP area is cramped, so it doesn’t take much to get in the woman’s space, for her to bend forward and shake her ass for the man behind her, to place her hands on the skeptical woman’s knees while doing so. “Sometimes getting it on with one of us makes the men like you better. You know, boy’s club and all,” Alex advises her. “I work a lot of parties like this. I promise it’ll feel good.”

“Can you get them to promise a delivery date two weeks sooner?” the woman asks, unimpressed with Alex’s flexibility and multi-tasking. “Because that is the only way I will leave this so-called entertainment establishment _happy_.”

“Well, what is it you’re looking to ship?” Alex grins and tilts her head as she asks, finishing her dance, the man’s legs turned to custard after her merciless grinding. “Fifty bucks, sir,” Alex winks and tucks the Grant beneath her g-string with the handful of collected ones she’d gotten from her shift on the platform. She fans the cash along the protrusions of her hip bones and feels like she’s accomplished something when she looks back at the woman and isn’t dismissed outright.

“Big men, big trucks, fast timelines, shipping jets… I’ve seen deals done here probably bigger than yours,” Alex tries boasting, zeroing in on the woman’s face, cataloging every feature so she can remember for her upcoming report. That white by the temple is striking, and Alex can picture herself pushing against it when she makes the arrest and dips the woman into the back of the containment car.

“So what about you, gorgeous?” Alex prods, pushing the woman’s knees parallel.

Power-suit doesn’t resist so Alex straddles her lap, the exertion from her dance finally catching up to her. Alex feels hot and loose, similar to the first round of stretching and calisthenics before PT begins. She sits with white streak chest to chest, eye to eye, and Alex can feel the coiled tension in every muscle, the definition hidden underneath a tasteful blazer and a pair of opaque navy panty-hose. The clothing is deceptive, though; Alex notices through touch and proximity that she is more muscle than money, less Wallstreet and more Waterloo, with her stoicism and apparent revulsion for the night’s activities.

“What about me?” the woman grits through clenched teeth, keeping her eyes trained on Alex’s face.

She’s not once cast a glance at the miles of leg Alex has on display, the black g-string covering what’s left of her dignity down below.

_Agent, not a whore. Agent, not a whore._

Nor has the woman’s gaze shifted to Alex’s stomach, wrapped up in some dark green corseted material that defies physics—it pushes her boobs up to her chin and doesn’t leave room for basic human functions, like swallowing or breathing. The damn thing is so tight she can’t even keep her dagger hidden beneath it.

But that is not the case with this woman. There’s enough layers there, layers of clothing, layers of thinly veiled disgust, layers of emotion and physicality that don’t add up with the situation. She could be hiding anything. White streak wears so many layers Alex wonders if she’s got a shiv tucked beneath her cuff, if she’s packing heat in a thigh holster.

Alex wonders why she finds the idea of garters and a thigh holster suddenly appealing.

“You deserve some attention,” Alex says. “Being with these cranky men all day, you need to loosen up.”

“You know nothing of what I need.”

“So serious,” Alex flirts, running her hands over the woman’s biceps, watching as her muscles relax beneath her touch, noting how her pupils expand just a fraction when Alex moves against her.

“And you are to reduce my stress? To ‘loosen up’ as you say?”

“If you want,” Alex says, tangling her hands in the woman’s hair, pulling at the pins holding it in place. Once she releases the knot, waves of thick, dark hair fall over the woman’s shoulders. A streak of white as stark as a fractured bone highlights the severe curve of her cheeks, the rigid set of her jaw.

She might be bad, but she certainly isn’t bad-looking.

“What’s your name, beautiful?”

“Astra,” the woman replies, clutching her fingers into fists at her sides. Alex smiles and dips down to lock eyes with her, then gently takes Astra's hand and places it on her own waist. Her fingers are cool, her grip loose, her concentration… not really where Alex needs it to be. She’s too focused on her colleagues, who in turn are focused on Lucy, trying her best to look sexy as she scrambles around the stage for the cash flung at her during the aerial routine. Alex thanks whatever higher power is listening that she doesn’t really do this for a living.

_Agent, not a whore._

Some women make it work. Alex understands that you do what you have to, but there are daily situations in places like this that can be nothing but embarrassing, nothing but awkward.

Like giving a lap dance to someone who has no interest in a lap dance. Who might be straighter than a laser beam. Who might also, beneath her blazer and hostility, be an alien criminal from outer space.

“Hey,” Alex mutters, attempting to turn Astra’s chin back toward her with her index finger.

It’s like trying to move 500 pounds of steel. There is not an ounce of give to her jaw and Alex wonders, fleetingly, if she’s felt that kind of resistance before. The formal lilt of Astra’s speech (even if she hasn’t been doing much talking), her human-like appearance, strength that seems otherworldly—

“Your heart is thundering,” Astra tells her, redirecting her attention from the group of clearly distracted men.

—and superhuman hearing.

_…might Astra be Kryptonian?_

“I go on in a few minutes and it’s only my second show here,” Alex lies. “Transferred from the Luxor and this is… a step above. I don’t want to mess it up.”

“This is a step above for you?”

“Let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about _Astra_ ,” Alex deflects, resuming her routine, shifting so that the drag of her thighs sends Astra’s hemline hitching further up her leg. “Astra,” Alex says again, leaning in to place a chaste kiss against the woman’s cheek. Alex feels fingers flex against her corseted waist, but Astra doesn’t push her away.

“You’re a star, you know.”

“A star?”

“Astra… the name. It’s Latin for _star_ ,” Alex says, tilting Astra’s chin toward the ceiling, nosing at her neck, letting her lips run down the tight cord of muscle that disappears beneath the crisp white collar of her blouse. She's gyrating in time with the music all the while hoping Astra isn't contemplating throwing her through a wall.

_Agent, not a whore. Agent, not a… a whore._

Alex can barely make out the tag with her face buried in Astra’s neck, but she knows the blouse isn’t a name brand. In fact, the shirt is something Alex might pick up on her measly government salary.

So maybe not usual working clothes?

Alex grinds down again and tugs at her collar for a better assessment.

_Agent, not a whore._

Maybe a cover, maybe she’s really got scales beneath this smooth, sweet skin…

_Agent, not a whore, agent, not a whore, agent not—_

Alex kisses Astra’s neck and tugs at her hair, feels the heat she’d been left with after the first dance skyrocket to boiling degrees as she grinds her center against Astra’s thighs, the music thundering above them.

“Yo, guys…”

“Check out the general…”

“I’ll give ‘em both fifty to make out…”

Alex blocks it all out and focuses, tries to right Astra’s wavering attention and guide her back, keep her hypnotized… as much as she can with all the snickering from the men surrounding her.

It’s hot and Astra’s skin feels nice, but Alex needs to keep her head on straight, needs to remember why she’s doing this.

_Agent, not a… not a dancer, not a stripper, not a…_

“What…” Astra eeks out, swallows hard, and makes a high-pitched sound of confusion. Alex feels the bob of Astra's throat, what with the way her lips are latched to her neck. “What… are you doing?”

“Don’t worry, pretty star. You’re not gonna burn me, are you?”

Alex grinds her hips hard against Astra’s legs and _oh, there_. Alex smirks as the woman hiccups, her eyelids fluttering shut and surging back open. Alex goes to the other side of her neck then to keep her off-balance, sweeping her curtain of curls out of the way, incisors biting at that perfect column of skin.

“Get it, Miss Ze!”

Alex resurfaces to find Astra flushed, the attention of every man in the booth turned toward the pair of them, rubbing and kissing and flirting in their midst.

“Gentlemen,” Alex begins, keeping her heavy-lidded gaze locked on Astra. “What’s say we let Miss Ze here relax with a body shot?”

“Hell yeah!”

“Fuck no.”

“Someone’s gonna die…”

Alex extends a hand and a lime wedge materializes from an over-eager spectator.

“Salt,” she commands, bringing two fingers up to her mouth and licking obscenely, hoping Hank is tuned into Lucy’s or Vasquez’s channel, praying Kara will buy her excuse of another ‘normal’ day in the lab when she goes over for tv night tomorrow after having taken seventeen showers.

She rubs her fingers beneath her ear and smears a handful of salt below the lobe. She then takes the proffered shot glass and pours the Fortaleza in a showy waterfall. It takes some finagling with the corset, but Alex eventually shoves the glass between her breasts, her cleavage held together by undergarment engineering designed to sexualize without any degree of practicality.

(Save for the storage of shot glasses).

“Ze! Ze! Ze! ZE! ZE! ZE!” the chorus builds, led by Maritt and his number two, the men chanting so loudly they drown out the electronica music from overhead.

Alex watches Astra wince and clench her jaw, staring resolutely forward as Alex puts her heaving chest on display.

“Have you ever done a body shot before?” Alex dips her head into her ear, though she doubts Astra needs the closeness to pick up on her every word.

Astra shakes her head, her serious demeanor not waning in the slightest. Alex leans in to Astra’s opposite side and mouths over her jaw, nibbling up to her ear.

“Listen, I know you’re not into this,” Alex tells her, going for solidarity instead of flirtatiousness. “Just give them a show and I’ll leave you alone for the rest of the night. I can make my tips on them.”

Alex feels Astra press her sides together with the palms of her hands, feels it way down deep in her ribs like when Kara gets carried away with a hug.

“How do you… take the shot?” Astra asks, her eyes flickering down to Alex’s cleavage.

“Lick the salt, drink the shot, bite and suck the lime,” Alex instructs, pointing beneath her ear, toward her chest, and then at the lime in her hand.

Astra purses her lips. Frowns. Concentrates—as if _salt-shot-lime_ are the most confounding instructions she’s ever received.

Her fingers dig into the miniature valleys of Alex’s ribcage so hard it makes Alex remember her first few rounds in the training room with Hank, getting pummeled every time she left an opening by mistake. Now, it’s intentional, this opening, and she prays Astra will fall for her trick.

Seduction.

Charm.

_Utter load of bullshit_.

Perhaps Astra won’t see it as such, and can tell her more about this delivery _,_ a delivery that could include anything from arms to aliens to asteroids.

Taking the salt-shaker from the tray conveniently delivered by Vasquez, Alex licks her hand again and shakes more salt onto her skin so Astra gets the full picture. She feels inept, the opposite of sexy, going about a rather workaday routine she perfected in grad school… college… fine, senior year, when getting drunk was the only way to deal with her lost surfing sponsorship, her rejection letter from Johns Hopkins, overbearing mother and six-feet-under father, her huge falling-out with her best friend, Victoria Donahue, that left her feeling lost in ways she couldn’t articulate at the time.

Alex finds it harder to concentrate on her melancholic memories with Astra’s tongue on her neck, her teeth scraping beneath the shimmery curtain of hair. Kissing, licking, taking Alex’s earlobe in with her sharp white edges and tugging until the flap of skin stretches and shoots back to its position like a string of elastic.

_Agent, not a… holy shit._

Alex grinds down and it’s not an act this time—Astra’s incisors are jagged, and have Alex wondering what type of imprints they would leave on a larger expanse of skin. Her clipped nails dig into the meat of Alex’s thighs and squeeze, likely to leave a palm print if Alex doesn’t say something (Alex wonders why she doesn’t _want_ to say something).

“Sh-shot,” Alex finds her voice beneath the unfamiliar high, pulling Astra’s head away from her neck. The men stand around them gazing, drinking, hollering as Astra raises her hand toward Alex’s breasts. “No,” Alex tells her, guiding Astra’s face down toward her cleavage. “Get it with your lips.”

In the darkness, amid the hooting and raunchy vulgarities spewed from alien and human alike, Alex and Astra the business-human-alien-criminal share a moment. Alex hopes her side of the moment sounds something like _do it for the stripper with a heart of gold, the girl who needs the tips._ She hopes it doesn’t sound like _do it so I can get them talking, confused, their fumbling extremities swinging too wide and wild to put up a decent fight_.

Astra holds her tight and Alex feels secure because Astra is strong and solid. Astra also seems completely over this situation, if her quick, audible exhalation is any sign for Alex. She is equally complicit in this show, but Alex wonders what she has at stake—how far Astra will go just to get her way with men who pack hotter heat than subterranean magma.

Astra dips and noses between Alex’s breasts, her mouth smushing against the hard palette of her brassiere-clad sternum. Alex sees a flash go off behind her, one of the men in the Circuit having gotten out his phone.

_Wonderful._

She hopes they’re all arrested and every device confiscated.

Astra digs the glass out and tips her head back, the expensive Agave shine dripping into her mouth, journeying down that throat Alex had kissed (for a mission) and churning inside the abdomen Alex had straddled before she felt her own stomach clutch—before she’d seen the challenge in this lethal woman radiating power, danger, and a hint of superior disinterest.

“Lime?” Astra asks her, and Alex nods, the wedge of fruit now stuck between Alex’s pouting lips.

Alex laces her fingers behind Astra head and rotates her neck, feels the heat of the club pressing down insistently upon her. Feels Astra's legs shaking beneath her and feels the ghost of Astra's tongue dancing beneath her ear. Astra tilts her head and leans in, brushing Alex’s lips when Alex sucks the fruit back in her mouth at the last second.

“Fuck, that is so _hot_!”

“Kiss her again!”

“Go for it, General!”

Another flash from a camera and Alex smirks, sticking the lime back out between her teeth teasingly, ready to suck it back in and take another peck should Astra go for the lime once more. At the end of the day, this is a show, and she’ll definitely get more out of the men fawning over the pair of them if she can keep up the act just a little longer. It's hot between them and Astra looks dazed, her pupils glassy and her breath coming in short, inconsistent bursts.

She almost feels bad for Astra, stuck with these guys who obviously don’t work fast enough for her, and now, Alex is using her to soften up the others so that she can ply them for information. Astra could be human, an outside contractor brought in for her negotiating expertise. It would explain her reluctance at being here, her determination for getting a delivery date pushed up, especially if she’s representing the humans at the proverbial bargaining table.

_Maybe she’s not a Kryptonian, maybe she’s just an innocent bystander._

Alex moves her hands to Astra’s side, smiling all the while, slipping them beneath her blazer to feel the hardened planes of muscle that comprise the woman’s torso. Astra goes for the lime again and Alex evades her, tucking the fruit to the side of her bulging jaw. Sour juice oozes out of the corner of her mouth while Astra kisses Alex again to the utter delight of the Circuit members and disguised Rozz hostiles. Alex pokes her tongue out, laps at Astra’s lips, relishing the warm, sour taste of lime juice.

Astra tenses beneath her and her eyes fly open, flashing with danger. She whips one hand up to grab Alex's jaw and jerks her chin, forcing eye contact after their kiss.

It’s not gentle, not easy, and certainly not tentative in the way Astra had acted when Alex first settled above her. It hurts a little, her chin stuck between Astra’s thumb and forefinger, pinched, her lips pursed and wet from the tequila and kisses.

“Do not test me for their benefit,” Astra hisses, yanking Alex’s chin back to attention. “You will be compensated accordingly, do not feel as though you have to pander to them. _Lime_ ,” she commands, loosening her grip ever so slightly.

Alex’s muscles twitch in her cheeks, her face held captive in Astra’s firm (inhuman—definitely inhuman—there is nothing but steel and stardust in Astra’s) grip. Alex pushes the fruit back between her lips and Astra bites into it, _chomps_ it, chews and swallows half of the pulpy flesh, rind and all. “Thank you,” Astra mumbles, and then forcibly _lifts Alex from her lap_ with zero leverage, while she’s sitting, just so she can reach for her purse.

“That’s…that’s eighty with the shot,” Alex stutters, because Astra, Astra’s definitely an alien, probably _the_ alien they’re looking for. Alex clambers down from the hold to right herself on shaky knees, swiping at her lip as Astra rifles through her bag.

Her gut was right, and Alex got nothing more than bruises and flushed cheeks and hints about a shipment, nothing more than frustration bubbling low and hot right before she has to go on that stage while Vasquez and Lucy take their turns at trading lap dances for insider information.

“Here. I believe this is five-hundred,” Astra removes a wad of cash, stands, turns Alex out of the booth and walks her past the velvet rope amongst the whistles and cat-calls of her fellow conspirators. “Use it to go back and study whatever subject required you to learn Latin. I know that is not a common language, and only those with more erudite inclinations would have an affinity for such vocabulary. I do not know much of you, but I do not believe this is who you truly are.”

_Agent, not a whore._

The assumption hits with all the force of a bare-knuckled punch. Astra flicks the bills from an absurd collection of cash, folds them carefully, gently takes Alex’s hand, and completes the exchange. Nothing about Astra seems tentative any longer: not her grip on Alex’s chin, not her severing bite against the rind of the fruit, and certainly not her man-handling strength, not her command that Alex leave their booth and find better use of her time than sitting in randy gentlemen’s laps for singles and Lincolns.

“You’re supposed to put it in the—”

Alex moves Astra’s hand to the thin strap rolling over her hip.

Astra narrows her eyes in the dark of the club and Alex can feel the embarrassing cocktail of judgment and pity. Alex has known strippers. Hasn’t pitied them. Because just like shooting, killing and maiming is her job, stripping, entertaining, and flaunting is theirs.

So why is the shame so apparent? Who is Astra to judge her?

Alex wants to see arrogance and hubris but the expression doesn’t register as such. Astra can belittle with a sneer, but the curve of her palm over Alex’s hip—the insistent fingernails digging into Alex’s flesh—all the little touches and pitying expressions signal a desperation Alex wonders if Astra even understands.

Perhaps that is a desperation on the precipice of concession?

Perhaps it is a desperation Alex can exploit.

Astra pivots back into the sea of business suits as Alex retreats to ready herself for her set. Lucy’s out of her stage costume and back on the floor in a purple g-string and corset combo, ready to pick up where Alex left off.

Maybe Lucy won’t leave the VIP section as frustrated as Alex, her lips tingling from the taste of kissing a star.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“And now, for all of you gentlemen out there who like it hot and heavy—”

Alex takes a deep breath through her nose. She’s done this twice, _twice_ , in the sparring room at the DEO for practice. They needed an in, and between Lucy’s aerial workout regimen afforded via her lawyer’s salary and Vasquez’s gigs in college a la Tom Cruise in _Cocktail_ , they both had their special “talents.”

For the production manager to clear them as floor and stage girls, all three had to perform and all three needed a gimmick, a shtick, something that would compel men to tuck twenties and fifties and hundred dollar bills into their thongs while they waltzed about on stage, clad in such scant amounts of fabric that all of the separate pieces sewn together couldn’t even make a beanie for a baby.

She feels more exposed than ever despite the weight of the costume, embellished with sparkly jewels and dangling bobs that jangle along her waist. The gauzy fabric is an outright hazard for what she’s about to attempt, and really, she only did it one time, on a dare, in college, and was lucky not to have had her face mutilated during the act considering how drunk she’d been. She’s glad for the chalk on her hands and feet, the white patches between her knees that will help with her grip. The production manager had nearly keeled over, talking about _aesthetic_ , and Alex had nearly socked her in the jaw, preferring to talk about _not falling on her head and breaking her neck._ But aside from the costume, there’s also her face: liquid black lines drawn out over her eyelids and bronze powder brushed along the apples of her cheeks, applied and shaded and softened beneath her browline. Her lips shimmer with the synthetic, stale taste of glitter and rose, the flesh darkened and outlined to seem almost grotesque in the dramatic shadows—plump and lascivious and utterly wanton.

Alex hates feeling like a showgirl, all attention turned her way when stealth has been symptomatic of her upbringing. Feeling overlooked comes as naturally to her as movement comes to dancers, melody to musicians. She takes another deep breath and makes sure all of her hooks are clasped and her ties are knotted; makes sure her gloves are in place, secures the over-elaborate head dress that adds even more weight to her straining neck. No matter how perfect her costume is, nothing will be able to lessen the discomfort.

“—an act sure to sizzle and leave your balls boiling—”

_Seriously?_

Alex swallows a gag and pities the people who get off on such introductions.

“Don’t get burned… by the Mata Hari!”

Alex slinks onstage as the torches poof to life, lighting her path like some model strutting down a runway with fritzy bulbs. She works her hips as best she can, ever-conscious of her hemline, how the shadows play about onstage as the music of the club shifts from throbbing techno beats to something far slower, hypnotic, a tickling percussion offset with bells and wind instruments. Low bassoon, clarinet, flute, all mellifluous and intoxicating turns of notes in the ear, all to match the ambiance of the act the people behind the scenes worked up for Alex to seem like a professional, like an _exotic_ dancer.

She can’t remember the last time she was naked in front of another person, let alone a roomful of people. All eyes on her, tracking her, getting off on her, sure to notice a slip or a mistake or any minute flaw that could make her as an agent.

_Agent, not a whore._

Alex has to sell this act. It’s imperative that she _not_ blend in, going almost over-cover instead of under. It’s the opposite of her training, the opposite of what Alex had always believed was an innate quality she had for disappearing. But Astra had looked straight at her, jerked her face in hand to keep that bold, accusing eye contact. She could tell, knew it as surely as Alex knows it herself:

_I do not believe this is who you truly are._

Her fingers clutch the flowy aqua material of her skirt so tightly she wonders if it will rip. The golden belt glimmering and dipping low on her hips sparkles with her every turn, the small, bedazzled stones catching the flickering light from the fires in their blazing facets. Alex can smell the chemicals reacting, can hardly see into the crowd for the lights coming up onstage to blind her, to expose her, to show how maladroit she feels without gun or pipette in her hand. The music picks up and she can feel her heart racing; she knows this choreography is supposed to come off as sensuous and sinful, but it can’t be enjoyable, must look so contrived coming from _her_.

Alex trails her fingers down the length of her arm to remove a glove and looks out to the audience, hoping to lock eyes with Vasquez, with Lucy, anyone who can calm her without a verbal reassurance. She won’t break down on stage but she certainly won’t do well, and if she can’t catch the VIPs’ attention all the way up here, she can kiss any more potential information out of the Fort Rozz and Circuit leaders goodbye.

She rocks back and forth and takes long strides, développé steps so that the bare skin of her legs peeks out from the slits of the skirt with each and every cross. At the front of the stage she stops, falters, forgets the motions she memorized for hours on end with Lucy and Vasquez so that none of them would fuck up, so that nobody would suspect them…

But Alex hadn’t planned on Astra the Arousing Alien sitting front and dead center, looking as composed as ever with her hair pulled back up and her blazer buttoned primly in the front. Alex hadn’t planned on actually being attracted to any of the terrible villains-for-hire that were making these deals, trading weapons, harming civilians, planning to overthrow governments and enslave entire populations. And Alex most certainly hadn’t planned on going too far with anyone in the illegal party unless the situation forced her hand.

But Alex had gone too far, and Astra seemed to _like_ it.

She'd nuzzled Astra’s neck. Licked her ear. Brushed her alien lips with her own and tasted tequila, tasted temptation.

And now there Astra sits, the leader of the arms and mercenary trade, gazing longingly at Alex like supplicants regard the Madonna, beneath, below, prostrate, guilty eyes cast upward to a shrine haloed in a flare of gold. Alex might only be imagining such intentions, her introspection and nerves overtaking her senses, but Astra seems enraptured, clutching the edges of her seat as if to keep herself from crawling up onstage to tear Alex apart.

If she’s right, this entire night could change. Leave Maritt and the Rozz escapees to Vasquez and Lucy, let her see what she can do with the tightly-wound leader in the pencil skirt.

If she’s wrong, well…

Alex would fare better if she knew for sure what type of alien Astra was. Then she’d know how brutal a torture to expect.

Alex rotates her wrists and pivots on the balls of her feet to face upstage, reaching for a clasp on one side of her waist as the music floods the showroom. She rolls her hips and casts a diffident glance over her shoulder, unhooking the clasp from the left side then swinging the gathered fabric out wide to her right. Her opposite hand flies to the clasp on her right hip, unraveling the criss-crossed fabric that had covered her lacey golden thong and garter set. The fern-colored straps feel like strike team restraints, tight, constricting, running down to secure transparent thigh-highs that match the patterned lingerie, all that flimsy material barely holding in her handfuls of skin. Alex turns toward the front of the stage once the skirt is pulled away, rolling her hips to the right as she swirls the fabric to the left, wrapping the cloth in her hands and swaying this way and that to a chorus of cheers and cat-calls.

Astra doesn’t react.

Alex hates that she _wants_ Astra to react.

She nixes the choreography.

Alex moves as far downstage as the runway allows, beckoning Astra forward with a curled finger. She falls to her knees, back arched, her shoulder blades pumping beneath her skin like the namesake of the club.

Astra doesn’t rise, just moves forward slightly in her chair, gnawing on the inside of her cheek like a predator on a carcass. Thankfully, the seats surrounding the stage are within touching distance (for obvious reasons), so Alex takes the end of the diaphanous fabric that had once comprised her skirt and loops it around Astra’s neck, pulls Astra closer, forces her to crouch, to stand, to place her hands on the edge of the stage as Alex opens her mouth, licks her lips, but never gets close enough for Astra to kiss. Astra follows her every move, lunging closer, her lips chasing Alex’s face as Alex grins, eluding her, playfully removing her other glove right in Astra’s face. The stage itself is no place for a private show, but Alex _needs_ this woman’s information. She rotates her head out of the way when Astra tries to press her lips against hers once more, whispering as she evades her:

“Maybe after my set,” Alex purrs, finding her inspiration in the woman who actually wants her, judging by the way Astra's eyes rove over her body.

Focus. Direction. A mission. An objective.

Astra’s the mark, so she’s the one Alex has to seduce.

“Mmhhmm, my bright, very overheated star,” Alex murmurs, so hot and close against her face she swears she hears Astra’s whimper. “How I wonder who you are…”

She lets the fabric fall from her fingers but she remains on her knees, spreads her legs, and then gracefully curls her back as far as her spine will allow, giving the congregation of arms dealers and aliens alike a good look at her pale abdomen, at the muscles tensing and rippling along her torso. She contracts, curls forwards onto all fours, and places her hands flat on the stage before her. She shoots up into a plank position, then dips down low, slips into the cobra, raises her ass into the air and returns to her original position, all a showcase of carefully-maintained musculature, glistening in the firelight. Fistfuls of money are hurled onto the stage, but that’s not the objective anymore.

Alex keeps her eyes on Astra as she begins moving her hands over her body.

She touches her legs, her lips, traces her finger down her neck and between her breasts, then rubs the outside of her thigh salaciously. Then there’s shoulders and lashes and abs, all on display for the onlookers, an anatomical buffet.

Astra doesn’t look away, and Alex tries not to stare at the cracks on the stage, the fissures in the floor that hadn’t been there prior to Astra propping her hands in that exact spot when Alex had teased her with the fabric.

From that moment onward, the dance gets easier. It becomes a game for Alex, one in which she pays zero attention to the rest of the audience, keeping her gaze trained on the woman she needs to break. She takes hold of the two gold-plated props positioned at the corners of the stage, lighting the wicks sprouting out of their spherical tops with flames from the lit torches lining the runway. The overhead and footlights dim as she twirls and extends her arms and legs with something like poise, shadows lurching, features lit with the indistinct malleability of a tiny fire. Her movements are controlled, her exertion minimal. She couldn’t wield a baton to save her life, so there wouldn’t be any pageant-inspired talent happening while she strutted about, half-naked and yearning for a woman who would sooner kill her than kiss her if she knew the truth.

Alex goes to the upstage corner of the runway and stoops low, lifting the shot glass of Bacardi left onstage for her routine up in one confident hand. She smirks out over her audience as the cheers escalate. She bends backward excessively and takes the full shot into her mouth, holding it as she inhales through her nose and raises the flaming sphere before her.

She spews the alcohol from her lips in a fine mist and the flames climb higher, a cloud of fire appearing as residual rum rains over the heads of the first row. More bills fly onto the raised platform as she makes her way to stage right and takes the second shot, spitting the liquid out in a haze. The fire cloud balloons again, her lips singed by the heat, by the alcohol, by the sense memory of Astra’s teeth dragging along the sensitive shell of her ear.

Alex spins, the flaming ball props glowing in her hands as she crouches, rolling one off toward stage right, and then the other straight down the runway. The flame keeps burning despite the roll, and eventually lands in Astra’s open hands. Alex takes to the pole and watches as Astra holds the device carefully, the alien leader’s attention split between her new toy inferno and Alex up on stage, a toy in similar regard. There’s only so much fuel left in that prop, and only so much time left for Astra to take the bait.

Alex unclips one shoulder strap from her golden bralette and tells herself she’s doing the right thing.

All the stage lights are off save for the torch flames and a backdrop of pure gold. Alex imagines that looking up at herself from downstage, her figure would be casting something of a silhouette, like an ink blot on a sunset. She takes a good grip on the pole and hoists her body up, engaging her core and pointing her toes, slowly pulling herself up into the human flag. She can’t hold it for long, knows she shouldn’t, as the first pair of the dozen flames fizzles and dies. Alex rotates herself into pike position and swings around the pole, inverting her body and looping one leg around the center metal rod to secure herself, using her hands and the back of her knee as leverage to support her entire frame while upside-down. Men bark like animals and Alex imagines a pack of wolves, lecherous, rabid, salivating and howling for her flesh. She secures her grip with her knee then places one palm and then the other flat on the floor.

The next set of flames gutters and evaporates into the dark air of the club.

She pushes away from the pole as the music crescendos, a deep, thunderous series of drums and acoustics galloping over the stage like a hunting party, hammering in her head, in her veins, leading her to Astra.

Alex dismounts from her position on the pole with a front-walkover, and then begins the long march down the catwalk.

Another set of flames dies, and the stage falls halfway to darkness.

Alex slips her other bra strap off and extricates her arm from the garment, the cups still holding fast because of the tight band below her bust. She slinks toward one side of the walk to allow two men to stuff cash into the lacey band of her thong, into the straps of her garters and the elastic of her thigh-highs. She cups their cheeks but keeps her eyes trained toward the end of the stage, knowing, even in the gloom, that Astra’s still there holding onto that tiny ball of fire. Another set of flames dies and Alex crosses toward the other side of the stage, falling to her knees while the men grope at her hips, thighs, knee caps, shoving bills creased long-ways into the thin straps of dainty lace curving over her pelvis. The fifth set of torches expire, leaving Alex standing on stage at the end of the runway, fans of cash hiding the skin of her waist and abdomen, her heart beat drowning out the final demands for her top.

Alex keeps looking down, waiting, waiting to see if her efforts have all been in vain. Astra cups the flame in her left hand and clenches against her skirt with her right, her lips parted, her complete focus upturned toward Alex like she's some anomaly flaring off of the sun. Alex smiles so softly none save Astra can see, the tiniest uptick at the corners of her lips reserved for the woman sitting four feet below her. Alex reaches for the clasp and yanks the bra from her chest as the final flames vanish. She chucks it over to some lucky man, and then crawls down to Astra’s level, her honey-hued cheeks illuminated against the tall shadows of the remaining light.

“Just think what I could give you in a private session,” Alex tempts her, moving close enough that beads from her headdress mash into the furrowed skin of Astra’s forehead.

Astra growls and steals the kiss Alex had been withholding since the very beginning of the routine, closing her grip around Alex’s naked neck and pinning her in place with that simmering strength. Her tongue pushes into Alex’s mouth and she takes, tastes, twirls with a dexterous, speedy swoop that is like no other kiss Alex has ever experienced. Alex hears the men around her riot, throw drinks, boom and squeal and roar at the display in the dark; but Alex can’t concentrate or move or breathe, Astra’s fingers circling her throat and purpling her skin, the smoke from the little flame clogging her nostrils. Her eyes might roll back in her head, she might moan her pleasure, she might climax on the stage right there with a candle by her side and Astra’s hand choking her—

“Meet me in the room behind the VIP lounge,” Astra commands, releasing Alex with a shove. Astra staggers backward and yanks her blouse into place, realigns the hem of her blazer and swipes her thumb over her lip. Alex sees two men from Astra’s party pat her shoulders, clink their drinks in front of her, whisper unheard praises into her ear.

She shares one last look with Alex in the shadows, then blows out the meager flame on the burning sphere.

Alex loses sight of her in the darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> make sure to double check the tags to know what you signed up for! consent issues initially what with the secret identity and all...

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“I was not certain you would come,” Astra says, pouring two glasses of something dark and strong, probably labeled _Bad Decision Proof 85%_. There is an empty bottle—an entire _bottle_ —right beside the one Astra unscrews, tips, allows to slosh over the rim of the separate snifters.

Did Astra chug the entire thing prior to Alex’s arrival? Does that much ingested that quickly affect aliens?

Maybe it’s something she can ask Kara about once this night is over, and god, Alex hopes it’s over soon. She’s too keyed-up, too nervous about what to do for this one-on-one. It had taken her a solid ten minutes to compose herself, to come to terms with the fact that she’d soaked her costume through onstage and Astra had barely even touched her, merely clasped her hands round her throat so tightly she could hardly breathe. She’s gotten muddle-minded all over some _criminal_ she’s just going to have to arrest once the night comes to a close.

Backstage, Alex had wiped the worst of the make-up off, taken an ill-advised shot of something sour and stout, and had dug her com out of her ear, left it rolling in a little plastic pile on top of the dressing table. Her head was buzzing like it usually did back in her apartment, back where the only judgment she faced for her drinking stared her down in the mirror.

She never, _never_ , drank on the job.

She also never considered fucking a mark.

Guess tonight’s a night of firsts.

Alex smiles, pushes her feelings to the furthest reaches of her mind, and shuts the door. The noise from outside muffles to dull bass thuds and the occasional catcall through the barrier. She’s left Susan to juggling bottles and pouring vodka down volunteers’ throats on stage and Lucy to lap dances in the VIP section.

“You got cash?” Alex deflects, twisting the lock on the doorknob behind her, clenching her teeth at the ominous _click_. “We can’t run cards for… backroom jobs.”

It’s not really a room in the back so much as a spacious private annex beneath the large, curved staircase, joined in part with an auxiliary room off toward the side of the club—storage, probably, nothing that showed up on the schematics when the DEO went over raid procedures. There’s a private bar, unstaffed, with smooth, shellacked wood and two or three black-leather swivel stools; comfy, chocolate-leather sofas; two poles sprouting out from the floor on platforms raised about a foot off the ground near the furthest wall in the back. Seating surrounds the miniature stages, and Alex wonders how many of these “private showings” the girls of Jaguar give to their clients. How many fall to their knees and ruck up their skirts for cash on the side. She wonders if those girls get the men talking like she wants Astra to talk. She wonders why she spent hours going over protocol with her comrades at the DEO instead of the women who did this for a living.

Maybe if she'd talked to the strippers, she wouldn’t feel so out of her element.

Like she’s confusing the job with something personal.

Maybe it’s because part of her—a small, fractured, lonely part—hasn’t had a beautiful woman look at her like this in a very long time.

“You do not want a record of our transaction?”

“Can’t,” Alex lies, stalking across the room with the lead-lined briefcase. She places it on the bar, turns, props a hand on her hip and feigns a nonchalance she doesn’t feel in the slightest. “There’s industry standards and… I don’t like to talk about the details of my job. It’s not sexy. You’d be surprised by all the regulations,” Alex bluffs.

“I’m sure,” Astra says, taking a sip of her drink, eyeing Alex like a tiger eyes a hunk of raw meat.

Alex changes tactics. “Tell me about your day,” she fishes, circling Astra, who chugs that strong amber liquid like Alex chugs her Gatorade after a sparring session.

The peep-toe heels are hell on her calves, but they set the mood. So do the drinks; so does Astra, with her warm, unabashed need. So does Alex, back in a black leather-and-lace get-up: booty shorts, high heels, a bra that’s gauzy as cobwebs, little black threads running in a convoluted pattern over her chest. She dims the lights to appropriate levels and saunters over to Astra, placing one hand against the woman’s waist. They stand eye-to-eye thanks to Alex’s heels, drawn together, close enough for Alex to slip one bare finger beneath the hem of Astra’s shirt and tickle the skin beneath.

This flirting, touching, the build-up of it all, has seemed quite predictable given what Alex knows of these illegal encounters. It's all unfolding just like familiar film plots until Astra stiffens beneath her touch, eyes shuttering, her body withdrawing.

“Come on, you asked me here,” Alex prompts her, reaching again for her.

_Had she already given herself away?_

“I could be back on the floor making—”

“I have twenty-five thousand dollars in that bag,” Astra tells her, nodding over to the nondescript purse Astra had been lugging about since she’d first arrived with her rowdy crew of delinquents. Crooks. The kind of men and aliens ready to seal their illegal weapons trade deal over the bottoms of bottles and women paid for promiscuity.

But twenty-five thousand dollars?

_Agent, not a whore._

Astra, however, seems to come from different stock than those dealers. She's stricter. Orderly. Military, if Alex could guess. She probably thought the least those unlawful belligerents could do would be to feign professionalism.

Perhaps that is why Astra has faltered so much this evening. Trying to cow-tow to a boy’s club with certain preferences when yes, she needs the deal, needs the arms or the work or whatever it is they’re shipping, but doesn’t want to go about celebrating it in this fashion.

At least, she hadn’t wanted to celebrate until Alex walked into her booth, poured a shot down her throat, kissed her, and gave her a lap dance.

“It’s yours,” Astra waves an absent hand at the bag, unable to look at Alex.

“Twenty-five… twenty-five thousand?”

_Maybe a whore. Maybe a concubine for that kind of money.  
_

“I believe so. This,” Astra waves her hand, motioning at the club in abstract, “was not its intended use. I did not bring that amount merely to spend on your facilities, as… _charming_ as they may be,” Astra sneers, rotating a critical eye around the room. She crosses to the bar and begins preparing another drink. “Is that not enough?”

Alex wants to ask her who Astra wants her to kill for that kind of money. Where to dump the body, what family members to intimidate, how thorough a job she needs to do scrubbing the crime scene.

“Depends,” Alex trails off, wondering what she’s gotten herself into. “You got a safe word? Are you clean?”

Astra tilts her head to the side and brings her hand up to readjust her glasses.

Alex has seen that move before, but can’t place it.

“I’m… sanitary?” Astra answers her.

Alex hums, then tries to clarify: “You want me to go down on you?”

“Pardon? Where are we going?” Astra asks her, delivering Alex’s drink and that clueless line without guile.

“We just need to talk it out first. Clear expectations. Maybe let me in on some of your history…” Alex keeps trying, hoping she can stall for long enough to get something arrest-worthy before she has to go too far. She takes a gulp of whiskey and water, swallows, and tries not to grimace at the burning taste. “…because I’ve gotta stay clean, you know. For the job.”

“I do not… I do not understand,” Astra confesses, rotating her glass to the side. She stares at the semicircle of liquid as if it might provide her with the answer she seeks. “This is all very strange to me.”

“Not your kind of celebration for a job well done?”

“The job _isn’t_ done, so I do not understand why we are here,” Astra fumes, then tosses the rest of the liquid back in one daring swallow. “This is swill, and we are wasting time.”

“You want me to go talk ‘em into speeding up a sale?”

Astra looms closer, her titanium fingers curled round the edge of the glass. She regards Alex with a predatory, feline grace, once that elicits tingles and charges and all kinds of nerve-bombarding sensations.

“What do you know of it?”

“I just figured… bunch of suits,” Alex bluffs, drawing closer, trailing her fingers down Astra’s arm. She places her own prepared drink on top of the bar and meets Astra’s angry glare. “Ties, blazers and briefcases—that’s sales. Or drugs. Maybe white collar stuff… insider trading? You’d be surprised what I can convince people to do.”

Astra’s breath hitches as Alex’s fingers rub at the knobby bone of her wrist.

“You are quite skilled in this profession, is that correct?”

“Skilled? Sure.”

“And how long have you been—”

“Two, uh, three years now,” Alex lies gracelessly, tangling their fingers together. “Had to drop out of grad school because… well, I got a little wild. Stopped studying. Loans,” Alex sputters, throwing what she hopes is a wistful glance toward Astra’s bag. “Money stuff, you know how it goes.”

“You were a scholar?”

“Hardly.”

“There are not many on your planet who know Latin,” Astra whispers, inching closer toward Alex’s face.

“My… planet?”

“Your country, your— _age_ ,” Astra amends, caught by Alex’s query. “I am sorry, I… I am not from this country.”

“Your speech is different,” Alex says noncommittally. “Russian, or something?”

Definitely not Russian. Alex knows Russian. She also knows that lilt, but putting two and two together this time could create more than four, more than eight, more like four billion charred and dead on an exploded planet, knowing what Alex does of Astra’s possible origins.

“No. Much farther.”

Alex raises an eyebrow, then brings their intertwined hands up before her face. She places a kiss to one of Astra’s knuckles, smiles, kisses the next knuckle in line, and murmurs against her pinkie: “I didn’t do so hot in geography.”

“You did well enough in anatomy.”

“Is that a come-on?” Alex asks her, allowing her free hand to stray, walking her fingers up the gradual curve of Astra’s bicep toward her shoulder. She traverses the slope of her neck, darts toward the base of Astra’s head, and soon, so wonderfully, amazingly soon, Alex drops Astra’s thoroughly-kissed left hand and they are chest to chest once again. “You don’t have to be clever. You are paying for it.”

“I…”

“What do you want, Astra?”

Astra drops her glass and the residual liquid spills on the deep brown carpet, adding alcohol to a host of other stains Alex shudders to think of seeing under a black light. Astra’s breath is balmy, like beach days back with her dad on the outskirts of Midvale. Days when the surf was choppy, the summer heat overbearing.

Astra is overbearing and intimidating. Flushed. Out-of-sorts despite this demand for Alex’s presence in the back room. Her hands fumble over Alex’s ribs. Clutch, release. An advance of lips, a retreat of chin.

_Uncertainty._

“Astra,” Alex tilts Astra’s head up, can only now see how the woman has shut her eyes so tightly the moisture leaking from them could be due to sorrow or strain. “It’s okay…”

“ _Iwanttoforget_ ,” Astra whispers, her fingers clutching Alex’s sides as if she might float away without an anchor.

“What?”

“Your kind are in the business of… pleasure,” Astra removes one hand from Alex’s waist and threads it through the hair over her left ear, stroking leisurely, lovingly, as if this means far more than it should. “Can you make me forget?”

“What is it you're trying to—”

“No, no questions,” Astra shakes her head and gently removes Alex’s arms from her neck. Alex can feel her chance slipping away, can feel Astra’s millisecond of vulnerability evaporate. “This is not… this is not who I am.”

Astra begins moving about the confined room, gathering, darting, glaring, doubting. She picks up the discarted glass from the carpet and sets it back to rights at the wet bar. She grabs the handles to her purse, then rebuttons the two clasps at her suit jacket Alex had only just noticed were undone.

“My apologies, I took you from an evening where money was—oh, here, I have no use of it,” Astra says, throwing a wad of cash wrapped in a paper band that could easily pay for Alex’s apartment, utilities, groceries… all of it, six times over. “You are a gorgeous woman,” Astra pauses, her eyes swimming with obvious regret. “It is not as if I think you incapable of earning money in this way. But I know you would have more use of those funds than I.”

“Wait!” Alex says, ignoring the money, the last thing a real stripper would do. “I…” Alex can’t stop the words from tumbling. She wishes she could paralyze them in the air, let the letters hang like smoke-blown rings. Alex wishes she could run her fingers through the alphabetized whisps and erase the willingness she’s shown in relation to this woman ever since Alex saw her walk into the club, ever since she felt that super-human grip on her body.

“I won’t ask questions,” Alex murmurs.

It’s the exact opposite of what her job requires.

_Agent? Whore?_

Alex will do the opposite of what she needs to do, if it means Astra stays moments longer.

Or will Alex follow through? Interrogate, make the arrest. What about Astra inspires such contradiction? Alex wants to lock her up, wants to warn her before the raid begins, wants to force answers because then maybe she’ll understand what a woman—alien—like this one is doing wrapped up in a disastrous deal with criminals so obviously beneath her.

“It is no matter,” Astra tells her. “You have your money. I will not keep you any longer than I have already.”

“Maybe you’re not the only one who wants to forget,” Alex rasps out, trying to keep her fingers from curling into fists. Failing. Wishing Astra would walk over, unpeel each digit from the stump of her clenching hand, thread their fingers together, and then walk out of this place with Alex by her side. “Maybe… maybe going back on the floor is harder some nights than others? Maybe a job in a backroom with someone who cares that I went to school to make a difference and got a little… sidetracked… maybe,” Alex gulps, and wonders how much of this is part of the show, wonders how much of this is the truth. “Maybe that’s how I want to spend my night.”

Suddenly, Astra is upon her. Holding her, pressing into her, carried by a speed Alex has seen before in her backyard at thirteen years old. Then, it was amazing. Now, it’s amazing.

“I have never done this before,” Astra tells her, cupping Alex’s face in hand, kissing her cheeks, running careful fingers along her jaw. Alex knows how strong those fingers are. That with one wayward press, Astra could snap her neck like a pencil. And though Alex should be sick with wariness, shaking from the precautions she knows she should take alone with a possible Kryptonian, she isn’t.

“I don’t believe you,” Alex responds, gripping the woman’s elbows, allowing her fingers to dance along the underside of Astra’s arms. She feels the heat from Astra’s body, from muscles that bulge underneath the navy cotton of the blazer, muscles that could wrench the pole two feet to their right from the ground and pummel Maritt and his henchmen to death with. “You had to have—you’re so beautiful—”

“No, that is… I have never… I have saved women like you—not like you—worse off, perhaps,” Astra tells her, and Alex really hopes that isn’t the truth. Adding nobility and heroism to a growing list of intriguing qualities makes Alex want to interrogate this woman less and less; makes her want to fuck her more and more. “I’ve never engaged in solicitation. I understand that this is your living, I just… hate my memories.”

“You really want to forget?” Alex asks her, and when Astra nods, Alex leans in, carefully removes Astra’s glasses, and kisses her.

Sweet. Unhurried, but not languorous. Lips brush, noses bump, and Alex pulls away, firecrackers cascading down her spine.

“Why would you want to forget doing such a good thing?” Alex asks her, hands dropping to the front of Astra’s blazer, working the buttons open again. When she finishes, she moves on to the white blouse beneath, plucking smaller, plastic disks from their slots, untucking the shirt as her fingers work. Astra removes the jacket and lets it fall to the floor, the rustle of material drowned out by the music from beyond. Astra tastes sweet like whisky so Alex kisses her again, and again, briefly pulling away so she can make quick work of Astra’s blouse.

“I have done worse things, better things, a life of accomplishments and…” Astra gasps when Alex places her palm fully against her stomach, fingers splayed over abdominal muscles carved from marble. “…dreadful failures.”

Alex smirks, skimming her fingernails lightly over Astra’s stomach, her bellybutton, the valley of her waist. Her trunk is all muscle, as are her arms, calves, the tendons of her neck and the powerful clench of her quads; it’s a physique carefully crafted through training or solar radiation but at the moment, Alex doesn’t care where Astra got her body. She just wants to devour it. She pulls Astra’s collar to the side and places an open-mouthed kiss to her clavicle, eliciting a groan from above. Alex can feel the stiffness recede, can feel Astra’s rigid professionalism soften to puddy beneath her attention.

“That sounds impressive,” Alex mumbles, moving higher to unbutton the rest of Astra’s shirt. Astra holds herself so very carefully, her hands light as air on Alex’s hips, as if afraid to truly latch onto her. This is nothing like the grip on Alex’s chin outside, that bruising force for the benefit of those men; nothing like that demanding kiss at the end of the routine, driven by fire and a voyeuristic impulse.

“Sometimes, people think things are their fault when it’s someone else’s call. You can’t blame your business decisions on yourself. The higher-ups—”

“I am a _General_ ,” Astra finally admits, her hands moving to the small of Alex’s back. She locks eyes with Alex for an instant, then dives down to capture her lips in a kiss far more demanding than their first in this room. Astra sucks against the wet flesh of her bottom lip and prods, her tongue rolling and roving, advancing and conquering whatever resistance Alex thought she still harbored. Alex gives herself over to Astra’s leading strokes, allowing the Kryptonian-in-disguise to maneuver them back against the bar so that Alex leans precariously, her front molding against Astra’s lithe form, her hands no longer tentatively creeping beneath the woman’s shirt but _oh_ , tugging, and _oh_ … kneading the gorgeous woman’s (alien’s, criminal’s, Kryptonian’s) breasts through satiny thin fabric while Astra kisses her breathless. Astra places a muscled thigh at Alex’s center and helps her hitch one leg over her hip.

“There is no one—” Astra snaps, pulling away from the kiss, her hands drifting to the curve of Alex’s ass and squeezing. God, Alex wants Astra to rip the black lace off with her _teeth_. “—higher-up than me.” One of those hands traces the underside of Alex’s leg as Astra rocks into her, the sensation shooting goose-bumps all along her limbs.

“General?” Alex gulps, shivering at Astra’s singular nod.

Alex kisses Astra’s chin. Pulls at her hairpins. Unfurls long, dark waves and a white curl her fingers automatically gravitate toward. Alex kisses Astra’s lips, runs her tongue along the seam for a taste then bows to Astra’s neck, collarbones, sternum, laving against the wide expanse of skin that doesn’t taste like salt because Alex knows she doesn’t sweat on this planet. Astra shouldn’t taste like anything if there are no environmental factors working on her body.

But Alex hums when Astra moans because she does taste desire, tastes it and nibbles at it and swirls her tongue over it. She wets Astra’s chest with her devoted attention, hating that she knows as much of the Kryptonian Military Guild as she does because now she’s _distracted_ by the mission instead of by the friction teasing her center and the taut nipple begging for attention two inches to her left.

So much for professionalism.

Alex slides her fingers under the (matching) navy satin encasing Astra’s breast and tugs at the cup so that she can kiss, so that she can suck and tickle and lick at that straining nipple and render an all-powerful military leader defenseless, a quivering mass of want.

“… _Rao_ —!”

Krypton’s god. That seals it.

Alex twists Astra’s other nipple through the fabric as she takes more of Astra in her mouth, feels the strong warmth of Astra’s hand pressing against the back of her head to hold her in place while Astra moves her leg against her. Overwhelmed with the scent of her, Astra’s tight hold on her hair tugs at the skin of her scalp, right on the precipice of painful, but it feels so damn good. Alex is mushed so intimately against Astra’s body it’s as if the woman wants to _absorb_ her.

She feels Astra’s knees buckle slightly so she reacts, catches her, holds her up, and it’s with practiced agility that Alex reverses their positions, releases the breast and turns them round so that Astra’s the one leaning back against the bar, her sleeves bunched at her bent elbows and shirt flapping open. Alex dips in again and returns to work, taking the other nipple between her teeth and tugging, one sharp canine leaving an indented impression when she releases Astra with a suctiony _pop_. Astra can hardly stand, her elbows holding her up on the bartop, the edge of the wood splintering beneath her steel grip. It’s all very hot and very fast and Alex is certainly flaming, coruscating bits of her flesh flying off on the wind with every stinging drag of Astra’s nails on her skin. She feels wanted, feels—not beautiful—but desired, which is good enough for Alex’s embarrassingly low self-esteem.

Alex pretends not to notice the buckling wooden bartop, feigning enchantment with Astra’s open shirt, her heaving torso, what’s left of the bra, yanked down beneath two spit-slick breasts. Astra’s huffing and still pulling on Alex’s hair, still hedging discomfort enough for Alex to enjoy the pain.

“Yeah?” Alex asks from her bent position, kissing right over Astra’s heart before dropping to her knees and reaching for her skirt, only to be summarily hauled back up and lifted, held, kissed and bitten and possibly cried on just a little, because Alex finally tastes salt.

Kryptonian tears or human sweat?

They’re too tangled up in each other for Alex to differentiate.

She’s against the opposite wall of the annex— _how?_ —and Astra is grinding into her, pummeling fruitlessly at her center with strong, frantic movements. During the transport, she must have instinctively spread her legs, hitched them over slim alien hips and locked her ankles at the small of Astra’s back. Because now she’s hot, she’s moving, taking brush after brush to her core. It feels so fucking amazing but this is supposed to be about _Astra_ , about getting her to talk, about manipulating a woman so desperate for contact she’s crying and sighing and whimpering against her neck.

Alex can’t focus on her objective, not with Astra’s lips sucking on her jaw, her hips grinding in between her legs as she mutters incoherencies into Alex’s ear. Astra takes one hand and cups Alex's breast, flicking her nipple as it strains against the black fabric. Alex can barely handle the glorious onslaught of sensation, so she bucks into Astra and groans, digging into Astra's scalp with her nails when Astra's steady flicks turn to forceful pinches.

"Oh, human..."

Astra’s warm embrace is secure, and that constancy, that dependability, it’s almost as intoxicating as the liquor. There’s comfort and a touch of greed, Astra taking what she wants from her. Astra pins her wrists above her head and kisses her ruthlessly, selfishly, like she hasn’t had close contact in _years_ , like she’s been so wrapped up in dealings with others that she’s never taken the time to find this release. She doesn’t even need her other hand to hold Alex up, not with their wall prop and Astra’s inhuman strength. Alex is unsurprised when the fingers gravitate from her breast to her throat once more, curling around her trachea.

“You found this—” Astra squeezes slightly, and Alex sees blissful black spots, “—appealing earlier, did you not?”

“Hmmh—”

“Tell me if I hurt you,” Astra pleads. “You must tell me at the slightest pain.”

Alex shakes her head and Astra releases her in an instant, slowing her rutting to cup Alex’s cheek. “Did I—”

“No, it was perfect,” Alex heaves against Astra’s body, a blaze of feeling returned to numbed lungs, tingles flying through her bloodstream. “We’d just… need a signal. I don’t think I can—I don’t want that right now.”

Astra nods immediately, drops her hand, and brushes the softest of kisses to Alex’s neck. She’s dazzling, she’s powerful, an amazing women with standards, from the little Alex has gathered about her—even if she’s not displaying them tonight, securing her position with arms dealers and rutting up against a stripper in the back room of a shady establishment. Or was there some truth to what she said at the beginning of their exchange?

_This is not who I am._

This is out of character, Alex notes, feeling the needles in her fingertips burn from Astra’s numbing grip.

_I want to forget_ , Astra had told her, had stepped out of her confining little box just to feel something for once.

_Twinkle, twinkle, shining star, how I wonder—_

Who are you, Astra?

Do you know Krypton’s gone forever?

Do you know you’re not the only one left?

Alex yelps when Astra slips a hand between her legs, cupping her through her shorts. She rubs slowly, gently, as if to make up for her earlier aggression.

Why is Astra getting into bed with arms dealers?

_When she could be getting into bed with me._

Why is she so desperate?

_Desperate to touch me._

What memories does she want to lose, and what has she done that she thinks one fuck can make it better?

_Fuck me, oh god, please, fuck me—_

“Please—”

“What is your name?” Astra asks, rolling her pelvis behind her hand, the black fabric of Alex’s lace-embellished boy shorts meeting the front of Astra’s navy pencil skirt in a lewd mesh of dark, shaded materials.

“Candi,” Alex responds on instinct. “Go ahead... fuck! You can—”

“Please,” Astra grunts into her neck, kisses her throat, holds her like something precious. “Please be truthful. Please, human.”

_Begs._

“Ale—Allie,” Alex says, nosing Astra’s head up to look her in the eye, those pupils blown black beyond comprehension. She kisses her to slow the frenzied rutting and jerks against the hold of Astra’s hands above her. Astra releases her wrists without hesitation, an interesting concession Alex files away for later. Alex grips Astra’s neck and kisses her again, feeling a Kryptonian pulse kicking beneath an index and middle finger pressed evenly into the equivalent of Astra’s carotid—thumpthumpthump— _boomboom—_ thumpthumpthump— _boomboom_.

“My name is Allison,” An alias. “But you can call me Allie,” Alex lies, whimpering when Astra wiggles her fingers under the hem of her tight shorts, skimming through her drenched folds. “Wait, I—wait,” Alex gasps, unhooking her heels and struggling to right herself on her feet.

She doesn’t _want_ to wait, but it’s gone too far. She’ll never forgive herself if it goes down like this.

“You—you say you’re… you’re military? A general?” She’s breathing heavily in the close, humid air of the annex, her eyes drawn to Astra’s flushed skin, her heaving chest, her sad, reckless expression. Astra’s hand on her hip is wet, is twitching to fuck her, but she can’t allow it. Alex forces her feelings down, determined to suffocate her emotions in order to do her fucking job.

“No—no wonder you want to forget,” Alex tries.

Alex places a hand on Astra’s shaking shoulder and allows some prolonged touching, cradling and squeezing and stroking Alex against the wall.

While they pause, Alex thinks of how far she’s willing to go for this job. What kind of betrayal she’s willing to pull, especially when the woman has seemed nothing but sincere throughout the evening. She wonders if Astra will fall for it. Hates herself for exploiting such vulnerability. Astra doesn’t push into her but does rest against her, sandwiches her in between her granite body and the fake wooden paneling, brushes at her hair and her ear with the utmost care.

“Can we leave this place?” Astra asks her, and Alex’s heart breaks a little at the solemn entreaty. “I do not wish…I want this for me. Not for Maritt. I will not owe him this. You are an unexpected gift.”

“I… can’t,” Alex says, an honest blush rising along her cheeks.

“Forgive me. I do not know what I am saying, Allison. Allie,” Astra confesses, swiping loose strands of hair from Alex’s face. “I have nowhere to take you. I am not… I have nothing that could…”

“You have twenty-five thousand dollars in a purse worth another three grand.”

“Oh?” Astra replies, some amnesia having activated with the prospect of absconding away with Alex. There’s money enough for them both to get out, money enough for them to leave easily, if they wanted. If Alex allowed it.

But that’s not what the mission is.

Contain. Capture. Interrogate, and stop the traffic of arms and aliens-for-hire. That’s what she’s here to do. Not help this woman.

This woman who might be even more broken than she is.

Alex shuts her eyes and indulges in Astra’s reverent touch. She grants Astra a smile, nudges the dislodged bra cups back into place, and runs her hands along Astra’s torso once more.

“I can make you forget you’re a General, if you want,” Alex offers her.

Her tactical mind—the one that didn’t almost get fucked into a wall—wonders how long they’ve been back here. She’s supposed to report back to the dressing room by ten thirty, knows Hank is going to freak when he realizes she took out her earpiece and hasn’t checked in for twenty minutes.

Alex wonders what this general would do if a subordinate broke protocol like that. Alex wonders if she would _like_ what Astra might do.

“I doubt that,” Astra chuckles, a pleasing sound.

Alex hates where she’s led them. Hates to do this.

Knows she has to.

“I can. I brought… accessories,” Alex says, nodding over toward the briefcase set atop the service bar.

Astra doesn’t even look, just stares at Alex, strokes her cheek, her jaw, makes her feel seen despite the lighting, despite the fact that she’s withdrawn into herself at every mention of the personal. Astra smiles at her and Alex feels wanted. It’s simultaneously the best and worst feeling in the world.

“Allie,” Astra deflects, kissing her forehead tenderly. “Tell me about you, so I no longer have to think of myself.”

“I’m not interesting,” Alex says, and really believes it.

“You are beautiful and passionate and brave, to manipulate fire as you do,” Astra tells her. “Studious, I have gathered. What did you study?”

“Science.” Alex can’t help the truth.

“Oh? Which field?”

“Originally? Medicine, anatomy, like you said earlier,” Alex says, smiling in tandem with Astra, looping her finger in that porcelain-white curl. “Do you have Waardenburg’s syndrome?”

“What?”

“Your hair,” Alex tells her. “People with Waardenburg’s… it’s genetic, discolors patches of hair, or eyes. And your eyes—I can’t tell if they’re grey or green or just,” Alex traces the arch of Astra’s eyebrow with her thumb, “…stars.”

Astra beams and Alex melts, her self-disgust peaking. She extricates herself from Astra’s hold and escapes to the bar, looking back over her shoulder.

“You were to be a physician?” Astra continues, engaged, settling a bit after the heat of their physical exchange cools to manageable degrees. At least Alex doesn’t feel like she wants to crawl out of her skin any more.

Back to business, Alex turns a combination lock to open the briefcase. “Started on my doctorate in biological engineering…”

_Why is she telling Astra the truth? Why can’t she stop herself?_

Astra hovers over her shoulder and wraps her arms round Alex’s waist, kisses her quickly on the temple. Alex nearly shuts the lid to the case and bends over the bar when Astra runs her nose along the shell of her ear.

“Why did you give up on your dream?”

Alex shakes her head. She doesn’t like to think of it as ‘giving up’ so much as protecting her sister. She doesn’t like to think of it as seduction, or betrayal, or leading on somebody brilliant… so much as doing her job. Alex places her palm over Astra’s linked ones at her abdomen and holds it there, whispering to her: “Other people depend on me.”

“And so now you do… this.”

“It’s a job,” Alex balks, removing her hand and rummaging through the toys (hoping she doesn’t set off a laser). Her fingers brush against leather, silicone, a container of lube, plastic gloves, something soft, and okay… there. “Like I said,” Alex turns in Astra’s arms, holding up the clinking cuffs covered with lead-based paint, shielding the sickly green glow Alex knows R&D worked for hours on end to conceal. “Maybe you’re not a General around me. Maybe you’re just… my prisoner.”

Astra arches a brow and for the second time in this back room, she retreats.

Alex wonders if Astra can sense it, the Kryptonite, or the magazine of military-issue bullets concealed in the underside of the briefcase; the sedative that actually fills the container of lube; the electrodes that shoot out from the buckles of the collar. All of the various gadgets and weapons were manufactured by the immature idiots in R&D when they’d heard that Alex, Lucy and Vasquez were going undercover at the Jaguar—cue the weaponry and sex toy talk. And so they created the cuffs—lined with Kryptonite and reinforced titanium—should one of the three need to take out the most powerful alien they’ve ever known to walk the earth.

A Kryptonian.

A Kryptonian _General_.

“Come on,” Alex prompts her, latching one cuff onto her own wrist and smiling, quickly undoing the piece with the key that she tucks away in her black bra. “It’s definitely a role-reversal, if you’re telling me the truth.”

“I am,” Astra affirms, her gaze a touch more critical, the headiness of their earlier confessions faded beneath Alex’s offer, Astra’s uncertainty, and the amount of trust Alex is requesting.

“You’ve got to be a little into it,” Alex prompts, twirling the cuffs round her index finger like they don’t weigh several pounds. “The restraint.”

She licks her bottom lip, smirks (hates herself), saunters over toward Astra (hates herself), stands on her tiptoes, cuffs dangling at her side, and kisses Astra gently, reassuringly. Hates herself, even more than she has in the past, which is quite the feat given Alex’s extended track record of self-loathing.

“You grabbed my throat earlier, and pinned my wrists to the wall,” Alex mumbles over the thudding music outside. “And maybe that’s what you’re used to. That control. Giving orders. Maybe you’ll… you’ll really forget what it’s like to be you, if you trust me.”

It’s not really trust, not for Astra, because she is skeptical and snide, looking at the cuffs like they are, in fact, toys. Looking at them with Kryptonian sight—haughty, superior—and hell if it isn’t damn attractive.

“I do not understand what is so appealing about this play,” Astra tells her, offering up her wrists, undoubtedly bemused by Alex’s suggestion. “But you are the professional, not I.”

“Put them behind your back,” Alex smiles, side-stepping Astra and dragging her fingers over the jut of the woman’s hip. “I promise, it won’t be like anything you’ve ever felt before. I’ll bend you over that couch and show you who’s really in charge, General.”

Astra snorts, and Alex doesn’t know whether to be offended or terrified, carefully opening the shackles one by one.

“Quite confident, are you now?” Astra teases.

And damn, they’ve gotten past the hesitation and the uncertainty to the familiar _teasing_ portion, that part that only comes round after the third or fourth date, after the first overnight, after they’ve broken through the initial barrier of formality.

Astra does trust her, and Alex wonders if her heart can sink any lower.

She places her hands over Astra’s wrists and holds them with the same technique she would use on a standard humanoid, but instead of immediately cuffing, she pulls the collection of mahogany waves off one side of Astra’s neck. Astra allows it, tilts, sighs when Alex places a kiss there.

“You’re under arrest,” Alex murmurs, clicking the shackles into place below the cuffs of Astra’s white sleeves with swift, professional ease.

“Astra of Krypton,” Alex takes a firmer grip on Astra’s elbow, can feel the ripple of muscles play beneath her hand. “You’re under arrest for solicitation, aiding and abetting, and conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity. Probably robbery or theft, looking at that amount of cash.”

“What did you say?” Astra asks her, pulling at the cuffs before freezing, standing still as stone in the middle of the red room.

The paralysis lasts for less than ten seconds, but it feels like a lifetime for Alex.

Then it’s tornadic force—yanking, struggling, twisting and attempting to wrench herself from Alex’s grip.

She can’t.

Alex knows she can’t.

Alex has only been at the DEO for a year, but even a novice in the field knows there’s no breaking out of Kryptonite cuffs.

Astra tries to spin around, to understand, to lock eyes with Alex and clarify what the hell is going on, but Alex holds her firm. The second she looks Astra in the eye, Alex will want to dig the key out of her cleavage, apologize, and set her free.

“Allie… Allison,” Astra continues to struggle, the edge of her voice pitched higher, manic. “What is this? What are you _doing_?”

“Astra of Krypton, by the authority vested in me by the Seditious Off-Worlders Act, signed into law via executive order, you are under arrest for— _fuck_!”

Alex swears. Alex swears and cringes, because Astra’s swiftly shattered the bones of her left foot with a stomp rivaling the weight of a bull elephant. Well, perhaps not shattered, but the pain is distracting enough for her to lose her grip on Astra’s arm. Astra bolts across the room. Alex winces, swears again, kicking the damned peep-toe heels off and scrabbling for purchase of her lost assailant.

Astra looks wild with her hair down and white Oxford blouse untucked. It flaps open, showcasing her navy bra and stretches of a perfect abdomen. Her breasts are on prominent display thanks to the cuffs pulling her arms tight behind her back; her legs are spread, pencil skirt creased from the wrinkles gathered around her thighs. Ready to run. Ready to fight, ready to maim, ready to tear into Alex the moment she makes a move toward her.

“Don’t do this,” Alex mutters, disengaging the hidden panel on the briefcase and withdrawing the slim black pistol from its hiding place. She digs into the depths of the carrier and finds the magazine, loads the gun, then points it at Astra. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

“How have you restrained me?!” Astra sneers. She’s breathing hard, balled up in the corner like a grenade with a missing pin. “Who are you?”

“Astra,” Alex says, her voice dropping back to its normal register, her gun extended, the left held against the stock of the weapon for support. “Get up and face the wall.”

Astra doesn’t move, and therein lies the problem.

Alex has fucked up.

Alex knows it. And Alex knows Astra knows it. She left her com in the dressing room like an idiot, fearing Astra’s alien senses would pick up on anything electronic, anything not protected with the lead lining. She doesn’t know how to get Astra out of the corner, not without compromising her position blocking the exit.

“You lied,” Astra says.

“So did you.”

“Not entirely.”

“Yeah, well, me neither, but I’m not the one trafficking guns,” Alex says, holding her ground and feeling patently ridiculous in her booty shorts and bra. She knows there’s a wicked bruise forming on her neck, left by the mouth of the woman she’s currently holding at gunpoint.

“You’d think Kryptonians wouldn’t need arms and ammo, considering these usually bounce right off your skin,” Alex says.

“And you plan to shoot me in this brothel to see if your restraints work,” Astra spits. “Is that your intention?”

“I’m not going to shoot you if you cooperate. _That’s_ my intention.”

“Interesting. I thought my hand on your throat while I shoved my fingers inside of you was all the intention you had for the rest of this evening.”

Alex bites back the quip on her tongue. She steps closer, close enough that she’s almost within reaching distance of the woman currently staring daggers at her.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Alex says, but she is… a little sorry. “That part before. I really am just doing my job. Now get up.”

If Astra had looked dangerous before, she looks downright _evil_ in the millisecond they lock eyes over Alex’s Glock.

“Very well.”

Astra flings herself from the corner, quicker than lightning and with more precision than sniper fire. Too dark, too fast, even with the Kryptonite. A blow, a crunch, and Astra’s angled torso knocks the gun from her grip. It discharges.

A misfire.

The ensuing scuffle leaves Alex sprawled on the floor, her pulse thundering in her ears. Is it the bass from the dance floor outside? Her heart clattering against her ribcage? Alex scrambles as Astra looms over her, frightened to fighting and fueled by self-righteous indignation. Alex sees the move—the telling twitch of thigh—tucks her arms in, and rolls out of the way just as Astra brings her heel down in the spot where Alex’s skull was. The wood doesn’t splinter like it should under a Kryptonian’s force thanks to the inhibiting radiation of the Kryptonite, but there’s more give to the platform than Alex’s human skull could ever sustain.

She somersaults backward, hating how impressed she is that Astra falls to the ground during the retreat and lifts her ass, tugs her hands from under her legs and works her shackled fists back to the front of her body. Hands up front.

Dammit, now Astra can _punch_ her.

Astra then jack-knifes at the waist, kicks her feet in the air, presses her hands over top her head for leverage and _springs to her feet_ , crouching low on sturdy knees and preparing to launch her body back into battle.

Alex pauses, spellbound.

_Awesome._

Terrifying, but bad-ass. If Alex wasn’t blocking a well-placed round house kick to the side of her head, she’d be even more impressed. She lands a jab to the throat and Astra staggers backward. The general rights herself in time to hurl her joined fists in an uppercut from below that splits Alex’s lip. Her jawbone rattles and blood gushes. Iron, viscous and warmer than alien skin, slides over her tongue and stains her teeth popsicle pink. Again, impressive, but that wide upward swing leaves too big an opening, even with the disorienting blow to the head.

She throws herself at Astra, a fist connecting with a jaw, a knee embedded in a gut.

Bent-double. Numb-kneed and hacking for breath against the force of the blow, just enough time for Alex to reach, to claw at the floor for the gun—

Tackled. Pinned. Twisted beneath the weight of navy pencil skirts and liquor lips and Waardenburg’s syndrome.

Choked and strangled. The cuffs in Alex’s face and the hands round her neck are the first sign of a shift in momentum— _but a shot goes off_ —the _pop!_ lost amid the thunderous music from the club, the bullet tearing through shoulder muscles… and the blood.

Blood red as the planet Krypton, blood from Astra’s body, blood spilling on the crimson and brown patterned carpet, blood pouring above and pooling beneath. Blood black and her vision black and her face purple, blue, unable to gasp as her trachea collapses under the pressure—

“Aagghh!” Astra shouts, pressing through her pain.

But Alex fights dirty with her last vestiges of oxygen. She punches at the bullet wound and digs a knuckle in at the point of entry.

Astra releases Alex’s throat and convulses as she falls to the side. Alex can suddenly breathe, gulp, choke on sweet air and feel the cartilage in her throat expand back to its normal size without lethal hands trying to crunch it.

Astra makes it to her knees, clutching her bleeding shoulder, heaving in the darkness as blood flows down the tattered sleeve of her shirt. Alex gasps, unable to catch her breath, feels her own blood trickling from the corner of her lip, dripping down her chin. Her adrenaline spikes as before and her heart hammers; she feels pain that hurts, pain that pleases, feels herself losing sight of what she’s trying to accomplish.

Alex stands and staggers toward Astra, landing a swift kick to the gut. The General collapses, energy depleted, drained in ways a Kryptonian has never been on Earth before. All thanks to the Kryptonite and the clean shot. No organ damage, no flecks of bone. Through-and-through and easy to clean, easy to staunch the flow, so Alex lays hands on Astra’s shirt and tears it in half, the _rip_ of material muffled by their grunts, by their hyperventilating crescendos. Astra tries to crawl, tries to move out from Alex’s reach but she’s injured, she’s hurt, damn stubborn and won’t—

“Stop moving.”

Alex wraps the bloodstained sleeve beneath an armpit that doesn’t lift because of the augmented handcuffs.

Astra, brilliant adversary that she is, does not stop moving. She squirms and fights until Alex pushes her uninjured shoulder back into the wall, working the rest of Astra’s shirt from her body.

“You imbecile,” Astra grits through her pain, crying out as the twist of sleeve contorts sections of her body already held fast by injury and enhanced shackles. “Close quarters with a weapon like that could have ricocheted—”

“I hit my target, _General_ ,” Alex counters, tying the remaining sleeve of the shirt into a tight knot round Astra’s shoulder, ripping precise pieces and draping them across the left side of the woman’s neck. She finds Astra’s discarded blazer and shreds it, then finagles Astra’s arm into position. She props Astra’s useless right wrist in the loop of the sleeve and lapel when Astra finally stops her squirming.

Astra eyes the dressings carefully, critical, wide eyes roaming Alex’s face, trying to get a read on her. Hopefully, Alex’s face is composed. More composed than her insides, which feel jumbly and strained and warm like she’s midway through running a marathon.

“A sling?” Astra asks, incredulously eyeing the material.

“For now,” Alex mutters, yanking Astra up off the floor by her good arm, not caring a lick that she’s wincing and grumbling, falling over her feet with arms scrunched up at her torso because of the indestructible cuffs.

Between the limiting motion range afforded via the sling and the shackles, Astra looks like some human forced into a prolonged chicken dance. Her elbows poke out at awkward angles, but she’s stained with much more blood than one would associate with such choreographed absurdity. Alex tosses her onto one of the couches now that the scuffle has come to something of a standstill. She hovers uselessly over her, unable to work out her next move.

Clean herself up? Call Hank? Administer the sedative and lock the door behind her, just so Astra doesn’t bust out and make them before the arrests can begin?

Grunting from the pain in her lip, Alex falls back on instinct. She retreats to the briefcase of goodies from R&D and returns with antiseptic wipes, gauze, and proper medical tape. She cleans her hands first, dons gloves, then turns to Astra, limbs and trunk as limp and red as cooked spaghetti noodles.

“What are you doing?” Astra hisses, teeth bared in pain, head flopped back on the couch cushion.

Alex doesn’t answer, just gingerly pokes at her shot right shoulder. The swelling blossoms beneath the makeshift bandages but when Alex presses, no more blood gushes forth. “You’ll need stitches, but with your skin—”

“What of it?”

“You’re usually bullet-proof,” Alex says, wiping at the dried bloodlines running down Astra’s sides. “I’ve never had to use sutures on a Kryptonian before.”

Astra remains silent for some time while Alex works, turning her head in the opposite direction of the wound. Alex can feel her breathing, knows it must hurt like an absolute bitch, wonders if Astra is replaying the night’s events in her head for any signal as to Alex’s ulterior motives.

“You are a physician, then?” Astra grits through the pain, her breathing steadier now even if her voice has dropped from angry to downright murderous. Alex continues to clean her, to tape the bandages and properly secure the sling.

She still doesn’t know why she hasn’t called Hank.

“Yes,” Alex tells her, unraveling more tape and gauze. “Sit up, okay?”

“Why are you—”

“I don’t know,” Alex interrupts.

It’s the truest thing she’s said all night. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing. The woman had tried to bash her head in two minutes ago and now Alex is _treating_ her, cleaning her, making sure her hands are clean to ward off bacteria that probably won’t affect her system anyway. Alex doesn’t know _why_ she does it, only that she feels she has to. Is it guilt over a betrayal? A compelling adherence to the Hippocratic oath?

Maybe she’s just sad that the stars don’t shine as brightly as they once did.

“Not everything I told you was a lie,” Alex concedes, gently pressing Astra back against the cushions. Astra’s cheek twitches, but she manages to stifle a groan. “I did study anatomy. Humans… aliens, too. Your healing powers have already sealed the exit wound,” Alex mumbles, making a mental note to ask R&D about the amount of Kryptonite used in the cuffs as well as the bullets. “You won’t hurt for long.”

“How wrong you are,” Astra snickers, lifting her cuffed left hand, swiping at the bloody stream pouring from Alex’s mouth. The blood is warm, Astra’s thumb on her lips is warm, and the heated adrenaline of battle will not subside, no matter how hard Alex tries to calm it.

“This hurts,” Astra mumbles.

Reluctant, as if she _less than_ for feeling pain, for getting _shot_.

“Then stop moving. The sling is there to hold your arm for a reason.”

“No,” Astra shakes her head, bereft. “All of this. I thought you… understood.”

“I do.”

Alex doesn’t know why she rushes to comfort her, a gun-shot woman, half-naked, alien, bleeding, miserable. Astra sighs and shuts her eyes for a moment, resignation clouding her cool, defiant features. She shucks the gloves and chucks them at the ground in her frustration, reaching for another antiseptic wipe.

“Such understanding with you humans,” Astra proclaims, blinking, then reaches for Alex’s lip again. Her fingers tremble from the effort, wiping ineffectually at what must be a stubborn bloodstain.

“Seriously, stop. You’ll hurt yourself more,” Alex says, returning Astra’s cuffed hands to her chest, her wounded arm to the sling. Her touch lingers over Astra’s skin as she shifts her elbow back into the bandage.

“For the record,” Astra whispers, staring down at her shot shoulder. “Everything I told you was true.”

“A lot of what I told you was true. I meant it, I... I do think you’re gorgeous,” Alex responds quietly, wondering at the inexplicable admission. “A little menacing, but… very beautiful.”

“Nothing so beautiful as a blood-bath? How twisted you are, Allison.”

“A-Alex,” she says, another disclosure, another accident that’s not accidental, just like the way she’s moving closer to Astra’s head isn’t accidental either. The way she touches the streak of white (now accented with a spatter of dull maroon) that’s been fascinating her all evening. Astra’s hand wiping the blood from her lip was no accident, either. Astra’s gravitation, her heavy breathing, her wandering eyes, taking in every inch of Alex’s coiled muscles and wary, capable body—nothing in that amorous look is unintentional.

Astra gazes at Alex’s fingertips held inches before her face, then turns, inexplicably, into Alex’s touch.

“My name is Alex. My _real_ name. Alexandra, but… Alex,” Alex offers it to her like an apology. “I had to do my job.” Alex keeps pressing into that hot, hurt cheek, wondering what could have driven Astra to this point in her life. She shouldn’t be so concerned over a woman—a _hostile_ —whom she just met, but Alex hasn’t ever had someone in training wipe the blood from her face as carefully as Astra had just now.

“But you knew, even at the very beginning, that I wasn’t who I said I was,” Alex shudders when Astra kisses her palm, wonders if Astra can taste the tang of blood that won’t subside. “How did you know?”

“You seemed far too smart to involve yourself in something like this,” Astra comments, eyes flickering back down to Alex’s swollen lips.

“And now?”

“You know what I am and you haven’t turned away,” Astra murmurs, placing another kiss to the fingertip pressed against her cheek. Her voice is thick when she asks: “Why is that?”

Alex doesn’t give herself a chance to answer. She leans down and Astra surges up despite her injury, kisses Alex like she did before the fight, when Alex had her mouth on her breast and Astra was little more than a vulnerable business woman looking to forget herself for an hour. Alex kisses her back roughly, because her earlier confession was true as well. Maybe she also wants to forget. Maybe she wants to feel wanted—wants to do her job, but can’t drown her overwhelming attraction in logic she doesn’t care for and wisdom she doesn’t possess. Tongues whip against each other so quickly that Alex is already having to alter her breathing, sucking in air through nostrils and emitting insubstantial sighs that Astra gobbles up eagerly.

“Wait, wait!”

Astra keeps kissing her, takes her bottom lip between her teeth and _bites_ , drags, releases the captive flesh with a scraping suction so hot that Alex feels her underwear flood again.

“No… wait…” Alex has to stop, has to let logic take the wheel despite how much passion might be pressing on the accelerator. “You’re—you just got shot.”

“A graze.”

“I shot you through the arm!”

“...I feel as though you could distract me.”

When she kisses Astra she tastes iron like stardust, iron like blood, iron like the will of an alien general shot and bleeding beneath her, still ready to fuck her despite their opposite loyalties. Alex straddles Astra’s hips and it must hurt a little, because Astra’s lips go tight in her kisses and Alex has a harder time probing inside with her tongue.

So she redirects, moves to tug the torn skirt up Astra’s thighs and kiss at her uninjured left side.

“I’m forgetting why this is a bad idea,” Alex says against the skin of her chest, slipping the navy bra strap off completely, repositioning the sling so she can return to the breast she’d tasted before dense bone had smacked against her jaw. Astra’s cuffed hands settle against her right shoulder and claw at Alex’s scalp when she takes Astra’s rosy nipple back between her lips.

“I…” Astra fidgets beneath her, spreads her legs open while Alex props her right foot on the floor to keep her balance. Alex runs her fingers over Astra’s covered center and sucks harder on her breast.

“I do not think I ever want to forget this,” Astra croaks.

Alex releases Astra’s breast and hovers above the immobilized woman so that Astra can kiss her, so that they can remember these feelings, this high, and can sweep aside the realities neither wants to acknowledge.

“We can forget the fight,” Alex suggests, sliding Astra’s panties to the side, running two fingers through Astra’s soaked folds. “Except the part about me winning. Let’s remember that.”

“You call that a fight?” Astra bites at Alex’s lower lip, and Alex moans at the aggression. “On my planet, we call that foreplay.”

The nips continue, and Alex loses herself, Astra seemingly growing wetter with every skimming stroke.

“Tease,” she breathes, nudging Astra’s nose for an added reprimand.

“That is what you are doing,” Astra corrects her, shuffling further down the couch, chasing Alex’s fingers with her hips. “My movements are cumbersome enough. If you could just— _oh_.”

Alex slips two drenched fingers into her with ease.

“You good?”

Astra nods and Alex works her, steadily pumping her fingers into Astra’s soaking core.

Sex. Really hot, wet, good sex, seasoned with blood, adrenaline, and a hint of taboo. She does want to bend Astra over a bar stool and then wants a turn with Astra’s hands tugging her hair, pressing her head into a pillow while she fucks her from behind.

It’s exactly what Alex told herself she wouldn’t do walking into this mission; but that was before meeting Kryptonian General Astra. Kryptonian General Astra who could give her a run for her money in the sparring room even without the powers. Kryptonian General Astra with the superior sneers and searching kisses and abs chiseled by a Renaissance sculptor and hungry, velvet walls convulsing around Alex’s index finger.

“So wet, you’re so fucking wet, General…”

Alex pushes in and out, loving the way Astra’s jaw works open and closed, loving the little grunts and mutterings that are just as apparent in her fucking as they are in her fighting. Slower, _deeper_ , with a twist for variety. She brushes something rough inside Astra’s body and the General shakes, her mutters devolving into indecent curses. She rotates her wrist and Astra cants her hips at the motion, wincing because she’s putting weight on her injured shoulder. Probably getting off a little on the pain.

“Hurts?” Alex asks, then bites Astra’s bottom lip to see if another minor hurt might distract her.

“Yes,” Astra grunts, but her hip rolling doesn’t falter. “No, not— _mmmhh_ —not like that. Feels good, feels—”

“You good? Do I need to—”

“Continue,” Astra commands, undulating beneath Alex, meeting each thrust like an opposing battle advance. “ _Yes_ , Alex, _harder_ —”

“Okay, hold on—”

“No, please!” Astra mutters, groaning when Alex withdraws her dripping fingers. Alex bites her lower lip, entranced by how needy this woman sounds, this alien General, this _superhuman_ , begging for Alex to touch her. She wants more than touch now, needs it like she needs a fifth of bourbon at the end of a botched mission.

“Why are you stopping?” Astra whines. “Why are you— _oh_.”

Alex removes the two fingers she’d stuck in her mouth for Astra’s benefit, marveling a little at the taste. Her tongue moves over her knuckles and Astra stares, transfixed as Alex cleans digits that had been fucking into her seconds ago.

“I’m not stopping,” Alex says as she grips Astra’s thighs and falls to her knees, a small ache blooming in the arch of her foot where Astra stepped on her earlier. She helps Astra lift her right leg over her shoulder. It relieves some pressure on Astra’s injured arm, and gets Alex so much closer to the goods. The scent alone is enough to make her stomach flip.

“I do not see how this is a better— _holy shit_!” Or, an expletive of synonymous meaning, from what Alex knows of Kryptonian swears via her sister. “ _Oh human_ , Alex what are you—?”

Alex makes another wide swipe with the flat of her tongue and Astra tenses so much Alex wonders if she’s already coming. She scoots back from between her legs and wipes her chin with the back of her hand, quirking her head in question. Astra’s pupils are blown and cloudy, her arms held high and tight on her right side by the wrapping of the sling.

“Has no one ever—?”

Astra shakes her head, taking quick, short breaths through her nose. Alex’s smirk grows.

“Well, this is going down,” Alex tells her, smug, loving the sting in the corner of her lip, loving the way Astra’s mouth gapes when she pokes her tongue out to catch a smeared taste of arousal from her face. She dips down and bites at the soft skin on the inside of Astra’s thigh, nosing along while Astra watches. “You like a human on her knees for you, General?”

Astra growls and begins tearing at her sling, pain from the wound forgotten in light of this novel sexual pampering.

“No,” Alex tells her, pushing Astra’s leg off her shoulder and rising to grab Astra’s flailing wrists. “You try to move out of that sling, and I stop.”

“But I want—”

“You get what you want when you’re not the one in handcuffs,” Alex interrupts, and Astra’s eyes sparkle at the challenge. “You see, you might like a human on her knees, but I like an alien in restraints,” Alex says, dipping back down and kissing south of Astra’s belly button. She tongues her wet, pink center, slowly prodding inside of her, tasting her, lapping her up. It’s been so long but Alex feels emboldened, feels like she could conquer any alien if she can get the upper hand on a Kryptonian, even like this. She squeezes her own legs together for several prolonged seconds before reemerging, running her tongue over her lips, soaked from nose to chin. Sated. Immodestly arrogant, as she dips her middle finger back inside of Astra, swirls it, and brings it up to her lips, shutting her eyes and humming at the taste.

Astra watches, fixated. Astra watches and whimpers and she’s helpless, squirming, can’t even move to _touch_ her.

“Here are your orders,” Alex says, wiping her wet cheek along Astra’s knee, just so she can feel how absolutely ruined Alex’s face is.

Alex leans back, takes in the display of Astra’s ripped skirt, her torn pantyhose, her topless, toned abdomen. God, it’s perfect, it’s a feast, and it’s all hers.

“Do not move your arms out of the sling. It’s for your own good. If you can follows those simple orders, well…”

Alex pushes Astra’s skirt all the way up to her hips and buries her head between her legs, looks up at Astra’s pinched eyes as she licks her clit and kneads the sides of her ass. She pulls back again, teasing, as has been the theme of the night. She bites the inside of Astra’s left thigh, knowing it won’t leave much of an impression, but wishing it would anyway.

“… I’ll let you taste. Okay?”

Astra doesn’t respond, just convulses slightly as her thighs tighten round Alex’s ears.

Alex smacks Astra’s exposed side to get her attention.

“Okay?” Alex prompts her.

Astra nods stiffly at the directive, but before Astra can snap at her, Alex delves in again, slurping, sucking, affording Astra her due respect as an alien military leader.

Kryptonians taste different from humans in the way that seasonings and sweeteners and spices all have distinct flavors, strong notes that satisfy specific cravings. Astra’s taste is indescribable, pleasant enough, overpowering what’s left of the blood in Alex’s mouth. Alex noses at her clit and pistons inside with her tongue, loving the way Astra’s thighs clench around her skull.

Now lips to the nub, fingers back in the heat. A cry of her name. Garbled sounds from above. Slower, corkscrewed thrusts coupled with deliberate flicks and sucks. Good—no— _great_ , because Astra is trembling, Astra is tensing, Astra is wet and ethereal and bloody and strong and deadly and _a mistake_ but Alex licks in earnest, like Astra is a lover and not an enemy (like she isn’t both). Heels dig into her back and muscles contract, Astra yelps, then comes on her tongue:

“ _Please, oh—please human. Alex, you are so—so—Alexandra—Alex!”_

Unnecessary praise, but it sounds better than fists thudding against bones, and almost sounds as good as the wet, sloppy noises she makes tending to every crevice of Astra’s center. Alex moans and sticks her free hand in her pants when Astra kicks at her back. Slips a finger inside herself to take the edge off. She keeps pushing through the tight, fluttering spasms and sucks harder on Astra’s clit, adding a light scrape of teeth as she had to Astra’s nipple before the fight, before the shift, before she realized she was willing to risk her career to fuck this woman.

“ _Unh—_ oh, Rao— _Alex_!”

Alex finishes her off with kisses to her thighs, hoping the come-down is easy in a way the treacherous build-up was not. She trails her wet fingers gently down the back of Astra’s calves and licks her clean, remaining on her knees for longer than she needs to. She feels dirty, but satisfied. Confused, incredibly horny, so horny one finger is not gonna cut it—nowhere close—so she removes her hand from her shorts and places it on Astra’s knee, gasping when Astra lurches forward, takes her wet finger and curls her tongue around the tip. It feels pretty damn good.

But maybe not good enough to look Astra in the eye. And definitely not good enough to pick herself up off her knees and face her boss, face her team—face the woman who has been crying her name or an iteration of it for the better portion of the night.

“Alex.”

Her summons.

She kisses against the soft skin of Astra’s quivering right knee, unable to make eye contact.

Why are her eyes so hot?

Embarrassment?

“Alex, please… please come up…you said I could taste—”

_Oh, right._

Astra gazes down at her with furious red eyes: bloodshot, tearful, spent, regarding Alex with the kind of terror Alex herself had exhibited when she’d seen her first alien combatant kill a fellow agent in the field.

Alex crawls back up her body and moves beneath Astra’s secured hands into an imitation hug, a not-quite-cuddle, close enough for Astra to kiss her and clean her like she so desperately wants to. The hold is not nearly relaxed enough for either of them to forget that Alex still has to bring Astra in when they’re finished… and they’re so close to finished. Astra’s attentive licks on her wet cheeks abate to butterfly pressures. She shifts to the arm of the couch and Alex lies partially atop her uninjured left side and in the aftermath, they just hold each other.

Alex’s kisses linger and sweep, they excavate and consume and suck the air from Astra’s lungs. They are the product of her fears, of stealing time like a renegade.

Who knows when the rest of her team might show up? Who knows if Maritt and his men will come barging in?

Who knows if she’ll ever get to kiss Astra again?

“I am sorry,” Astra tells her, kissing her forehead, moving down to capture her lips and _oh—_ oh damn—that one tasted like goodbye.

“What for?” Alex asks.

“I am not certain myself, now,” Astra answers, drawing little patterns on the open skin of Alex’s shoulder. Alex relishes those touches, sweet and absent, like they’ve no worries beyond this room. “Though I had suspected… are you a soldier, Alexandra?”

“It’s Alex,” Alex corrects her, feels the need to defend herself even in this compassionate embrace. “What makes you ask?”

“You did shoot me. And land several punches. That is not… I have not faced a formidable adversary in some time,” Astra hums, and Alex wonders if the rumbling happiness agitates her shoulder. “I cannot recall the last time I took orders from anyone.”

Alex doesn’t ever preen, hardly ever blushes, but the pride swelling within her is something she cannot staunch. She traces the lining of the medical tape on Astra’s shoulders with her finger before answering. “Yeah, I’m a soldier. Part scientist. Doctor. My organization, we’re— _I’m_ —supposed to fight you.” Alex tucks her head into Astra’s neck and breathes her in, liquor and blood and glorious mistakes. “Let’s leave it at that.”

“I wish to see you again,” Astra tells her, those fingers like stardust on her neckline. “Very much.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Alex responds, thinking of what a Kryptonite-activated cell will do to Astra’s system. What all those clear walls and cameras might mean for a repeat of this encounter. “I have to take you in—”

“Must you?”

“A soldier follows orders,” Alex argues.

Astra smiles at her, runs her fingers through the ends of her hair, and places her thumb over the bruise she left on Alex’s neck. Presses down. Rubs it, affords it attention and reverence not usually reserved for a hickey… or perhaps the abrasion left from a wayward punch.

“Yes,” Astra agrees, smiling her watery smile. “Soldiers should also avoid crawling into obvious traps, no matter how comfortable.”

Alex furrows her brows and her fingers tighten over Astra’s ribs. “What do you—”

The pressure comes before she knows what hits her. Her own leverage is used against her, the bicep of her right arm twisted across her body cutting off a major artery, blocking the blood flow to her brain. Astra’s using her own position _against_ her. There’s pressure from the left side with Astra’s uninjured arm, the squeeze against her carotid with Astra’s clasped hands at the side of her neck—she can’t breathe.

Alex cannot _breathe._

And she is fading.

After the fight, after the sex, after the adrenaline of being on stage, she won’t be able to hold out for long. Spots blur her vision, and the room grows dark as quickly as an autumn evening.

“Alexandra…”

Alex sees stars dim before falling to easy, welcome sleep.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Alex has never felt more humiliated in her life.

Scratch that, third semester of grad school was as epic a fail as her year of ‘giving guys a chance’. But this mortification comes close to nose-diving GPAs and attempted dates with the opposite sex.

At least Vasquez had found her, not Hank.

Thank God for small blessings.

Because after the sex, the back-room “deal”, the fight, the containment of the prisoner, Alex still has to explain that she’d gotten the cuffs on Astra, but that the alien had overpowered her. And she has to admit that yes, taking her com out had been a bad (terrible) idea, but General Astra had been on edge about the mysterious shipment all night and was looking for the slightest reason to bolt. And Alex has to explain why there's blood everywhere, ripped pieces of a white shirt and broken heels and overturned liquor bottles in the back room. She has to explain that the assailant had gotten away, had performed a textbook choke and rendered Alex—an elite agent, high-performer in her class, tops in marksmanship and hand-to-hand engagement—helpless, unconscious and bleeding on the floor of a strip club.

She also has to explain the hickey on her neck.

Her paperwork is minimal, considering she didn’t actually get to the _detaining_ portion of the night. Maritt and a dozen others were arrested and processed, six of whom ended up being Fort Rozz escapees. The raid went well enough, and they were only missing one rogue leader—the General.

Alex showers, _twice,_ at the city headquarters close to her apartment, thankful they don’t have to transport the detainees to the desert facility until tomorrow when she’s supposed to clock in… at noon.

It’s 2:45 a.m.

Famished, achy, and confused, Alex rolls her bike into its space of her apartment's garage and bolts for the elevator, slips onto her hall when the bell dings and trudges four doors down, grumbling when she drops her keys. Two of her knuckles are scabbed over. She wonders if she caught one of Astra’s teeth with her left cross.

Alex huffs, then shoulders her apartment door open and flicks on the lights, drops her work duffel, and shuffles to the kitchen. She totters about, setting her oven to preheat before unwrapping a frozen pizza. She retreats to the bathroom, running too-hot water for the tub. Once the water’s finished running Alex puts the pizza in, sets an alarm on her phone for 20 minutes, and heads back to soak while her sustenance bakes, looking forward to the steamy heat that will envelop and soothe her tired muscles. She hardly cares that it’s her third wash of the evening.

She can’t remember when she nodded off in the water, but she’s forced to climb out of the tub and towel off, don a robe, and address the banging on her front door. Mr. Tillman. _Again_. And really, he’s up at three a.m. anyway, she’s not disturbing anybody, but with her odd hours and heavy tread, she’s almost grown accustomed to his crotchety night-time visits.

“Mr. Tillman,” Alex groans, approaching the front door in her bare feet. “Look, it’s been a really long night and I just—oh.”

“Hello,” Astra says, standing rigid at the apartment threshold, her hands clasped before her. She sports a skin-tight black suit, long sleeves, black boots, her hair hanging loose and free down her back. There’s no glasses, no pretense, and, from the looks of it, no hole in her shoulder. It’s only been four hours since their rendezvous in the backroom but Astra’s already shed the cuffs, and with them, her vulnerability. She stands tall, no hunching over, no favoring her right side, as if Alex hadn’t put a bullet through her shoulder earlier that evening.

Alex leans against her doorway and tries to reconcile Astra not in the club, not in a business suit, not stooped over and cursing her existence.

“How did you find—”

“Followed the caravan to your headquarters,” Astra says. “Then I followed you. Your transport is… exceedingly unsafe.”

Alex snorts, then gestures to Astra's hands. “Looks like you got out.”

“I have… tools,” Astra answers cryptically.

“At your place you can’t take a date?” Alex asks, tapping her fingers against the door frame. Astra furrows her brows, and Alex clarifies. “You said you wanted to get out of the club earlier. Go somewhere…” she trails off. “… away. Better. With me.”

“Oh, yes, that is correct,” Astra nods, chewing nervously at her cheek. “My quarters are not adequate for such socialization.”

“Is that what we were doing?” Alex asks uncertainly, grabbing hold of the doorknob to ground herself, because seeing Astra on her doorstep feels like flying. Despite being forcibly restrained, choked to the point of unconsciousness, she doesn’t feel unsafe. But she sure as hell doesn't know what any of this means. “Socializing, I mean.”

“Well,” Astra remarks, inching closer, the beginnings of a smile winking out over features that usually seem quite placid. “From what I know of… _socializing_ ,” Astra carefully extends her hand, keeping eye contact with Alex, checking in, even at three in the morning, even after everything they’ve been through. She takes the tie of Alex’s robe in her fingers but doesn’t tug on it. Just rubs the tattered hem with her thumb, back and forth, back and— _oh_. “Have we not left out an element of… reciprocity?”

“The choke hold did put a damper on things,” Alex laments, addressing the elephant in the room—doorway—hall.

“I could not let you detain me.”

“What makes you think I won’t try again?”

“I do intend to leave you breathless, Alexandra,” Astra says quietly. “…if you want me to.”

“It’s not really a question of ‘wanting’ at this point,” Alex answers her, attention focused on Astra’s fingers, wrapped round her robe tie as her own fingers had been curled in Astra’s stark streak of white. “I think we both know how… willing… we would be if not for—”

“But if we can keep our duties separate from our personal interactions, I believe this… you and I… could form some sort of arrangement.”

“Arrangement?” Alex echoes, incredulous.

Before she can agree or send Astra packing, her phone trills, shattering the moment.

And before she can turn it off, Astra scoops her up in a protective hold, her eyes burning blue from a laser-like heat.

“Your quarters have been infiltrated,” Astra summarizes, squashing Alex closer to the door. “If I can disarm the bomb before—”

“Hmmmh! Let me go!” Alex pushes against Astra’s body, trying (and failing) to disentangle herself from a powerful (superhuman) and strong (protective) embrace. “It’s just my alarm.”

“Are there intruders?”

“No, it’s for food.”

“Oh,” Astra says, releasing Alex instantly, bringing both hands up to rub the concern from her face. “My apologies.”

“You like pizza?” Alex asks, smiling, because Astra was about to shield her from a bomb, despite evasion, despite the precarious limbo between personal and professional they’re currently negotiating.

“Peet-Zah?” Astra repeats, waiting by the door as Alex crosses toward her phone, swipes the screen, and silences the alarm.

“Close. _Pizza_. It’s food. Bread, cheese, tomato sauce, not as good as Stella’s though.”

“Who is Stella?”

Alex looks up from her counter top to find Astra still hovering near the entrance, clutching the door frame as if to hold herself back from an intrusion. “Why don’t you come in and let me tell you?” Alex offers, thumbing over her shoulder at the oven. “Then maybe after pizza, we can move onto the reciprocity portion of the evening.”

“Are you certain, Alex?” Astra asks her, and Alex finds the question simultaneously sweet and belittling. Like Astra actually cares about what Alex wants. But also like she doesn’t completely trust Alex to make a sound decision.

“No, I’m not,” Alex answers, because she’s not certain of anything that’s happened over the past few hours. “But I’d still like for you to come in anyway.”

“Very well,” Astra answers, floating inside, shutting the door behind her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_“Fuck-fuck-fuck-oh fuck—!”_

“Is Fuck your human deity?” Astra inquires, looking up from between Alex’s legs, arousal dripping down her chin. Alex grabs the back of her head with both hands and shoves Astra back down.

Thank _fuck_ she takes the hint, because Alex starts moaning Astra’s name seconds later, could be shouting _quick-study-quick-study-quick-study!_ about that speedy tongue doing devilish things to her center. Then she’s inside, two fingers curling, suckling at her clit while electrodes dance along Alex’s nerve endings, rapid-fire sensations bombarding her body with all the force of a Kryptonian punch. Astra walks her free hand up Alex’s torso and clutches at her ribs, her left breast, squeezes and tugs while Alex groans beneath her. The fingers twist and Alex gasps, feeling Astra shift below, reposition herself to reach upwards, to gently curl her fingers round Alex’s neck.

“Do you want it?” Astra pants, thrusting in time with Alex’s rocking hips.

Alex can hardly put two sounds together, let alone think about the consequences of people seeing purple bruises dappling her throat if Astra chokes her again. She wants it badly, wants to give Astra that tenuous control, feels _relieved_ when she does so. Fingernails scratch at the soft skin below her jaw while Astra kisses her ribcage, sucking and biting and leaving red marks for her to admire later.

“No,” Alex manages, reaching to tangle her fingers in Astra’s. “You… I want—kiss me.”

When she comes, Alex bites Astra’s lip hard enough to draw blood and arches off the mattress, the duvet half-crumpled beneath Astra’s naked body and half-spilled on the floor (along with Alex’s robe and Astra’s suit). Astra slides back down to prolong the bliss, holding Alex’s jerking hips in her solid Kryptonian hands. It’s Astra’s name on her lips and Astra’s lips on her clit and Astra’s fingers inside of her like she’s wanted since Astra licked salt off her neck hours upon lifetimes ago. And it’s good, _fuck_ is it good, when the rest of the night has been terrible, one bad decision heaped on top of another. But that orgasm— _oh shit, keep going_ —nothing about that is bad.

Alex blinks up at her ceiling as space rights itself again, her equilibrium restored once Astra relents, placing sweet kisses to Alex’s hips and abdomen. Astra moves up between her legs to cross her arms over Alex’s middle, to swipe a thumb over her chin and then to kiss at Alex’s stomach, her belly button, close enough for Alex to reach down and place her hand on Astra’s head.

“Am I to assume that was a satisfactory performance?” Astra asks, propping herself up with one elbow near Alex’s right side. Her chin digs into Alex’s hip, and Alex can feel the sharp jut of bone vibrate in her skeleton when Astra speaks. She uses her free right hand to trace little patterns along Alex’s ribcage, her stomach, her waist, the underside of her breast. It’s difficult to reconcile such gentleness with the fire and blood of their fight, the way Astra’s eyes had flashed when she was first restrained.

“Don’t get cocky,” Alex chides, but hell if the experience wasn’t close to flawless with that superhuman tongue. “But yes, Astra,” Alex reaches for Astra’s unoccupied left hand, flopping her head back onto the pillow and leaving Astra to her distracting traces. “That was great.”

“You also said your pete-zah was great,” Astra scoots up to nuzzle at her breast, to kiss her nipple and leave it chilled from the brief attention. “Am I to be content with an assessment you’ve also bestowed upon earthly cuisine?”

Alex lets her head loll to the side and tries not to laugh, or giggle, or pool into a puddle of smiles at Astra’s measly attempts at flirting. How they had gotten from body shots and pole dances to late-night pizza and comfy cuddles is beyond Alex, but she doesn’t want to jinx whatever this is.

It’s been too long, and Astra is looking at her like she wouldn’t mind another round in bed, another slice of pizza, maybe even another fight. That combination is difficult to find in a woman, much less a woman who looks like she was shot to Earth from a planet of sex goddesses.

“C’mere,” Alex instructs, grabbing at Astra’s arm to pull her upward. Astra hovers over her and she places both hands on her chiseled cheeks, pulls her down into a kiss that is oh-so dangerous.

It’s not a sex kiss.

It’s an _I like you_ kiss, and those have never turned out well for Alex in the past. She kisses Astra and doesn’t expect another choke hold, which is nice, and Astra returns the kiss without the desperation she exhibited back at the club. Something about that place—like Astra had said from the outset—just wasn’t _them_.

But neither is this comfort. This ease, this contentedness. Astra’s still waiting on a shipment of something from somewhere, and now she knows where Alex works, where Alex lives. And Alex knows that Astra’s a General, that she’s the leader conducting the business between arms dealers and aliens at Fort Rozz. She knows that she’s expecting a shipment of _something_ potentially dangerous, and wants the delivery period moved up by two weeks. Two weeks from now? Two weeks from _a year_ from now? Just how far does this plan reach?

Alex also knows a lot about Krypton. Things she shouldn’t know or divulge, to keep Kara safe. But the ability to speak of a long-lost home world might give comfort, and part of her wants to be able to provide that.

“Where did you go, Alexandra?” Astra asks, rolling off of her, propping her elbow up on the pillow and slinging an arm round Alex’s waist. Alex turns on her side to face her, to throw a leg over her hip, and it’s so perfect a fit Alex wants to give a shout-out to fate. Or maybe Rao. Whoever it was that oversaw her brief career as a stripper.

“I was just thinking how bad an idea this is,” Alex says, twirling her fingers in Astra’s white streak. “What is it that you’re shipping?”

“Ah,” Astra smirks, the sharp whiteness of her teeth and the curve of her jaw reminding Alex of the club, of a jaguar, graceful and lethal and stunning. “How do you know about Krypton?”

“Where do the Fort Rozz combatants stay? Where’s the hideout?”

“How were you able to restrain me? Where did you get that substance?”

“We could keep this up until sunrise,” Alex remarks, running her finger down the chords of muscle in Astra’s throat, dipping down to the space between her breasts. “That’s why it’s a bad idea. An arrangement.”

“You do not wish to see me again?”

Alex feels fingernails dig into her back. It’s probably involuntary, a minor reaction from the perceived rejection, but with Kryptonian strength it’s sharp and painful and possessive and wonderful.

“Of course I want to see you again,” Alex reassures her. “But my job… we can’t let you hurt anybody.”

“I have no intentions of hurting you.”

“Me?”

“The humans,” Astra emphasizes, shifting from patterns to circles, low and gentle at the small of Alex’s back. “No physical harm will come to your people.”

“Why do I feel like there’s more to it than that?”

“Because you know there is, and you also know I will not divulge such information. If we meet on the battlefield then we meet as soldiers, not lovers. Though it might be difficult to keep my hands off of you,” Astra says, running an errant finger down Alex’s cheek.

“So… we keep doing this?” Alex asks her. “Here? Wherever? And then we just act like we’ve never met each other if we end up fighting?”

“I suppose those are the terms we must set,” Astra sighs her reluctance. “Those boundaries could be beneficial. But this…” Astra leans in to kiss her once again, deep and searching and close enough to perfect Alex might cry. “…this offers immense benefits for the both of us.”

“I’d be lying to my team, to my boss, to my—” Alex catches herself, doesn’t say _sister_. “To everybody.”

“I am not asking you to take a risk I would not take myself. There are those in my command with a poor opinion of humans.”

“Yourself included.”

“If he knew I had begun a relationship—well, that I was having sex with a human…”

“He?” Alex asks.

Astra stares at her, eyes roving, searching, cataloging her expression with such critical scrutiny she feels more exposed than she had on stage at the club.

“My husband,” Astra finally answers, her fingers no longer stroking Alex’s back. “I do not love him.”

“That much seems evident,” Alex replies, reflexively drawing Astra closer with the leg she has hitched over her body. “But you still want to keep this up?”

“If it does not interfere with other objectives,” Astra answers her. “You are… quite remarkable, Alexandra.”

“Says the flying woman,” Alex parries.

“How do you know all of this?”

“The job,” Alex lies. “Superman. I know… it might not mean much to you, but I’m sorry about Krypton.”

Astra ducks her head down and into the pillow, burying her face against Alex’s chest. She mumbles something and starts to move, but Alex clings, draws her back, doesn’t let her go.

“Hey, come on,” Alex tries.

“How is it that the single time I allow myself an indulgence, I come away with a woman who knows of my homeworld?” Astra asks her, tears pooling in her green eyes. Army green, like a forest Alex would love to get lost in. “You were supposed to help me forget.”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Alex tells her, somehow still energized, somehow pushing down all her soreness so she can offer Astra this kindness. “We don’t have to talk at all.”

She moves over Astra and kisses her again, ignoring the taste of sorrow, that salty tear that escaped despite Astra’s best efforts to hold it back. It’s a very bad idea in a lifetime of questionable choices, but Alex has always had a streak of recklessness as prominent as the streak in Astra’s hair. She wraps her fingers in that curl and pulls, kisses, tells Astra how much she wants her without saying a single word.

It’s a very bad idea, but for once in her life, Alex is choosing for herself.

She’s choosing Astra, will choose her again, for many nights to come. She wonders what will happen when they battle in the future, when they finally come head to head. Alex wonders if she’ll have to make a different choice, no matter if she wants to or not.

**Author's Note:**

> just so everyone knows my cheeks are on fire


End file.
